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Three die suddenly from rare Lyme disease complication

One was found dead in a car that veered off the road. Two others collapsed and died suddenly without warning. All three may have been killed by an infection known for causing long-term misery, but not one usually considered a killer — Lyme disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports Thursday on the cases of three people who literally dropped dead from a heart infection known as Lyme carditis. The two men and a woman were young, aged 26 to 38, and had not been treated for Lyme disease.

And no one suspected an infection until an astute pathologist readying heart tissue for a possible transplant noticed something wrong.

The first case was one of those inexplicable deaths, when a young, seemingly healthy person dies suddenly from heart disease.

“In November 2012, a Massachusetts resident was found unresponsive in an automobile after it veered off the road. No evidence of traumatic injury was found,” the CDC team and state department of health investigators write in the report. The driver was dead.

In the second case, a New York state resident had chest pain and collapsed and died at home last July. This patient did have an unusual heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, but no one suspected something else might have been involved.

The same month, a Connecticut resident died suddenly while on an out-of-town visit. “The patient had complained of episodic shortness of breath and anxiety during the 7–10 days before death. The patient lived on a heavily wooded lot and had frequent tick exposure; there was no known history of cardio­vascular disease,” experts wrote in the report, published in the CDC’s weekly report on disease and death.

All three were tissue donors. A pathologist at the Cryolife tissue lab in Kennesaw, Ga. noticed something unusual when he was examining the heart valve from one of the victims as it was being prepared for a transplant. “He noticed the histopathology was similar to what he had seen in Lyme carditis,” said Dr. Joe Forrester, a CDC epidemiologist in Ft. Collins, Colo. who helped write the report.

The Ft. Collins lab checked the blood; the CDC in Atlanta checked the tissue and found the characteristic Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. “We began investigating,” Forrester said.

The Massachusetts victim may have had symptoms of Lyme disease. “Interviews with next-of-kin revealed that the patient had described a nonspecific illness with malaise and muscle and joint pain during the two weeks preceding death. The patient lived alone with a dog that was reported to have ticks frequently,” the report reads.

Forrester said the victim almost certainly did not think anything serious was wrong. “If I had muscle aches and joint pains, I don’t know if I would go to the doctor right away,” Forrester told NBC news.

Only four other deaths from Lyme disease have ever been reported, CDC says — two in Europe and two in the United States. “Pathologists and medical examiners should be aware that Lyme carditis can be a cause of sudden cardiac death,” the agency advises.

Lyme disease is common, and this deadly complication remains very unusual. “We believe it’s rare. We are trying to find out how rare,” Forrester said.

CDC says while 30,000 Lyme cases are reported a year, it’s probably much more common than that — perhaps as high as 300,000 cases a year.

It’s most common in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

It’s not clear what the message for the general public might be – people are already cautioned to avoid being bitten by ticks, especially in areas known to have high rates of Lyme disease. Lyme is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi and antibiotics usually clear it up. And Forrester says only 1 percent of people infected with Lyme disease get carditis.

There is not a vaccine against Lyme, so CDC recommends using insect repellants — those containing DEET are best — and wearing long sleeves, pants and socks when in wooded areas where ticks might be found.

Source: nbc news

A stone baby found in 82 years old colombian woman

An 82-year-old woman complaining of stomach pain was revealed to have a 40-year-old fetus inside her body.

Multiple news agencies reported that when the Colombian woman when to a doctor in Bogota, they found a lithopedion, or a calcified fetus, inside her stomach.

Also known as a “stone baby,” a lithopedion happens when a mother has a pregnancy that doesn’t develop in the uterus, according to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Typically the fetuses are more than three months old and found in the abdomen. The fetus lacks circulation, which leads to extra calcium buildup.

Because it is so large, it cannot be absorbed by the body. Instead the fetus becomes calcified until it is removed.

According to the Irish Independent, about one out of every 11,000 pregnancies will turn into a lithopedion. Most women do not know what happened or that they were even pregnant, so it can remain inside them for quite some time.

An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine explained that the first known case of a lithopedion was found in 1582 in a 68-year-old woman from Sens, France. The fetus was estimated to be about 28 years old.

The Colombian woman was reportedly transferred to a different hospital to have the fetus surgically removed.

Source: Cbs news

‘Nuances of childhood TB are never taught in medical schools’

If diagnosing tuberculosis in children, particularly those aged under five years, is fraught with problems, health-care workers at different levels who are unaware of the latest advancements in childhood TB diagnosis and treatment make it even worse.

“Tuberculosis is a part of the training programme when doctors go through a M.D course. So a basic training is provided,” Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Director of National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (NIRT), Chennai said. “But we are talking about in-depth training on the recent advances in TB diagnostics and treatment. They [doctors] are not aware of these.”

There is a lack of awareness in India despite the National Revised Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) and the Indian Academy of Paediatricians (IAP) working together to develop the diagnosis and treatment guidelines.

This brings to the fore the compelling need for ongoing training in childhood TB. “Constant upgradation of knowledge is what is needed,” she said. “Private practitioners are generally not well informed compared with government doctors. So there is a need to reach out to private practitioners and train them.”

“Unfortunately, even in high TB burden countries, many paediatricians know little about TB and do not diagnose it in a timely fashion. TB is often poorly taught in medical schools and the nuances of childhood TB are virtually never taught,” Dr. Jeffrey R. Starke, Professor of Paediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas said in an email to this Correspondent. “As a result, paediatricians do not consider TB diagnosis and a child is not referred to the NTP [national tuberculosis programme] where TB-specific care is provided.”

The need for an engagement with health-care providers of different specialisations and at different levels cannot be overemphasised. “The engagement of all who provide care to children (including paediatricians and other clinicians) is crucial,” the 2006 WHO report on Guidance for National Tuberculosis Programmes on the Management of Tuberculosis in Children notes.

The recently released WHO’s Roadmap for Childhood Tuberculosis report emphasises the same point. “There is an urgent need for greater awareness of and increased screening for TB in children, particularly by services that serve children… Children with TB often present at primary- and secondary-care settings where there is a lack of guidance on how to address the challenges of diagnosing and managing childhood TB,” the Roadmap states.

The Roadmap has identified the need to engage four health-care programmes including maternal and child health services and private health-care sector.

“Overall, training of medical and nursing health workers on childhood TB seems to be variable, but often poor. It is quite good in South Africa, because TB is so common and so it [training] is a part of pre-service curriculum,” Prof. Steve Graham said in an email to this Correspondent. “In so-called developed countries, the general public and the health services lack knowledge of childhood TB because it is so uncommon.”

Prof. Graham is from the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia, and also The Union, France. He was the Chair of the Childhood TB subgroup of the Stop TB Partnership that led the Roadmap.

According to Prof. Graham, the awareness level of the latest developments in childhood TB should trickle down to the lowest level in the health-care system to increase the number of children who would get diagnosed and treated for TB on time. This includes “any health worker who cares for an adult case of TB or any health worker at a primary- and secondary-care level that diagnoses TB in children.”

Source: the hindu

 

Baby steps to saving lives

 

Each year, one in 10 babies around the world will be born prematurely and over a million of those will die. But could measuring the size of a baby’s feet help save lives?

In the final weeks of pregnancy, the idea of going into early labour might not seem like such a bad thing.

But giving birth prematurely – officially classed as before 37 weeks gestation – can lead to long-term health effects.

Depending on quite how early the baby is born, infants can either be completely unaffected or left with permanent disability and learning difficulties.

The issue of prematurity is particularly pronounced in South Asian and Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for over 80% of the deaths caused by pre-term birth complications.

In rural Tanzania, for example, about one in every 30 premature babies won’t make it past four weeks.

However, most of those lives could be saved with simple advice for mothers.

And that advice, says an international group of researchers, could start with just a footprint.

Foot chart with side rule

The larger foot on the yellow card represents a full term baby’s foot size. If a newborn’s feet are smaller than th

Sizing upe small foot on the card, the baby is probably premature and the advice is to take the baby to hospital immediately. Side rule added for scale.

Most mothers in high-income countries will give birth surrounded by medical equipment or with the support of a highly-skilled midwife.

This means that any problems, such as a low birth-weight or the mother’s waters breaking early, can be dealt with immediately.

In contrast, around 40% of women giving birth in low-income countries will do so without the help of a trained medical professional.

And due to inaccurate dating of pregnancy, many of those women will have no way of telling if their baby is too early or too small.

However, measuring the baby’s footprint could be used as a simple proxy for birth weight.

“There’s this grey area when the baby is between around 2.4kg (5lbs 5oz) and 2.1kg (4lbs 10oz) when the baby is more vulnerable to infection and other issues,” says Dr Joanna Schellenberg of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“But when a baby is born at home, there is no way of weighing them,” she told the BBC.
The BBC’s Tulanana Bohela has been to see the project in action
To help solve the problem, Schellenberg and her colleagues at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania have implemented a strategy called Mtunze Mtoto Mchanga – which means “protect the newborn baby”.

It includes using a picture of two footprints on a piece of laminated card and a local volunteer placing the baby’s foot against the images.

If the baby has feet smaller than the smallest foot, around 67mm, then the mother is advised to take the baby to hospital immediately. If it measures in between the big and the small image, then the mother is told about the extra care she needs to provide to increase the baby’s chances of survival.

Although the card is fairly accurate for five days after birth, it should be used it to identify small babies in their first two days of life, which is when they’re most at risk of dying without specialist care.

Mariam Ulaya is one of the volunteers at Namayakata shuleni village and visits the women before and after the birth.

“If I’ve measured the child’s footprint and seen that the child is smaller than usual, then I instruct them to carry the child skin-to-skin so that the child can share and feel the mother’s warmth,” says Ulaya.

“I also carry a small doll with me called Opendo. I use the doll to illustrate the proper way to breastfeed the child.”

‘It has helped my child to survive’
Such advice may seem simple but can really be the difference between life and death.

A report by the World Health Organization (WHO) says that of the 15 million premature births globally each year, more than 80% will occur between 32 and 37 weeks’ gestation.

Risks factors for premature birth

There is no clear cause of premature birth and there tend to be many different risk factors involved.
These include infections of the genital and urinary tract, pre-eclampsia, problems with the placenta and gestational diabetes.
Obesity is another major risk factor for premature birth.

Fetal fibronectin is a protein which can be used as a reliable indicator of preterm birth. It normally appears around 22 weeks and then again at the end of pregnancy. If it appears between these dates, early labour often follows.
Research also suggests that low levels of the hormone progesterone in the saliva could also help spot women at risk of sudden premature labour.

Most of these babies will survive if given extra warmth through skin-to-skin contact and very regular breastfeeding to help fight off infection.

In fact, the report states that an estimated 75% of deaths in preterm infants can be prevented in this way – without the cost and emotional upset of intensive care.

Salima Ahmad is 25 and has three children who live with her in Namahyakata dinduma village, Tanzania. Her youngest son, Alhaji, was born prematurely.

“I was a little bit shocked because many premature babies end up dying but I was also happy because I had a live baby,” says Salima.

Although Alhaji was born at the local hospital, Salima was given advice and support by volunteers from Mtunze Mtoto Mchanga about how to care for him once she got home.

“Carrying skin-to-skin was good but difficult in the beginning. But when the volunteer was visiting me and encouraging me, I could see myself managing it slowly. It is good, it has helped my child to survive,” she says.

Salima also feels that understanding more about premature birth helps mothers like herself to deal with it properly.

“It helps a lot for the mother not to be surprised when having a premature birth. It is useful to know in advance as you get good knowledge on how to handle the premature. Myself, I do thank the volunteer who talked about it when I was pregnant and she even taught me how to carry skin to skin.”

Source: BBC

Older people may be less tired: Study

Senior citizens reported feeling less tired than younger people, including teenagers, in a new US study.

To the researchers’ surprise, 15- to 24-year-olds – the youngest people in their study – said they felt the most fatigued of all during daily activities. The difference between the two age groups was almost one full point on a scale of 0 to 6, with 6 representing “very tired.”
“It’s a big effect,” Laura Kudrna told Reuters Health. She and her colleague, Paul Dolan, conducted the study at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The link between increasing age and decreasing fatigue held steady when they factored in how much people slept, how many children they had, whether they were employed and their general health.

Additionally, the researchers found people who were more educated and healthier tended to be less tired. Women reported feeling more tired than men. And feelings of fatigue increased with each additional child in the family.

The study of nearly 13,000 Americans is one of very few to investigate tiredness on a large scale, said Kudrna. It was published in the Journals of Gerontology Series B.

“The evidence on this so far is quite mixed, and most studies have either been done in clinical settings or in Europe,” she said.

Source: your health

Vitamin C – A Powerful Cancer Cure?

A 2008 Vitamin C – End All Disease study conducted by the National Institute of Health found that, when injected into mice, Vitamin C could slow the growth of tumours. Despite the long history of research into vitamin C and cancer with many of the same findings, the research paper presented its findings as new. Curative health affects using vitamin C therapy have been known for a long time.

Studies on Vitamin C and Cancer

* A study conducted in 1969 found that Vitamin C would selectively kill cancer cells without harming normal cells. These scientific findings were largely ignored by the medical establishment.
* Clinical trials conducted by 2x Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and surgeon Ewan Cameron were able to prolongue the lives of cancer patients 6x longer than they would have lived without Vitamin C.1
* A 1994 study conducted by Dr. Art Robinson found that mice with cancer fed a diet of raw vegetables and given high-dose vitamin C lived up to 20 times longer than the control mice.2
* After reviewing the existing literature, Steve Hickey, Ph.D and Hilary Roberts, Ph.D found that in high enough doses, Vitamin C acts as an anti-cancer medicine.3

How Does Vitamin C Work to Kill Tumours?

In healthy tissues, Vitamin C works as an antioxidant to clean up and remove free radicals, and in cancer cells it acts as an oxidant which kills abnormal cells and generates free radicals.

When blood levels of Vitamin C are maintained at a consistently high level, it is absorbed into tumour tissues, where it generates hydrogen peroxide, killing cancer cells.

If you want to understand why Vitamin C can detoxify ANY known chemical, here’s what you need to know:

* All toxins are pro-oxidant in the body, which means they take electrons away from cells unless neutralized with antioxidants. This oxidative stress damages cells.
* Increasing your body’s blood levels of the antioxidant Vitamin C will give the toxins something to consume so that they cannot negatively effect your cells, and they are then removed from the body.

Source: end all disease

Pakistani doctor wins $1m to fight child deaths

A Pakistani doctor won a $1 million grant on Tuesday to fight early child mortality in a small fishing village in southern Pakistan in a contest financed by an American entrepreneur to find innovative ways to save lives, The Caplow Children’s Prize said.

A proposal by Anita Zaidi, who heads the pediatrics department at the Aga Khan University in the port city of Karachi, beat out more than 550 other applications from more than 70 countries. The prize was founded and funded by entrepreneur Ted Caplow to find impactful and cost-effective ways to save children’s lives, according to a press release announcing the results.

Zaidi said in a telephone interview that her project will focus on reducing child mortality rates in Rehri Goth, on the outskirts of Karachi. According to Zaidi, 106 out of 1,000 children born in the town die before the age of five. That is almost double the worldwide under-five child mortality rate of 51 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2011, according to UNICEF.

Few of the women in the area of roughly 40,000 people have access to medical care during pregnancy or money to pay for things like multivitamins, said Zaidi. There is no nearby hospital, and women usually give birth accompanied by a birthing attendant with little or no formal training.

When women do run into complications giving birth, the babies often die while the women seek medical care, the doctor said.
The money will be used in Rehri Goth to eliminate malnutrition among expectant and new mothers and their babies, ensure that children have access to primary health care and immunizations and train a group of local women at Aga Khan University to become midwives.

Women taking part in the program would get two medical checkups to monitor their pregnancy, multivitamins to promote a healthy fetus and food if they are malnourished, she said.

Zaidi has been working in the area for the last ten years on various health-related research projects carried out by the university so she was familiar with its needs.

“I know this community. I know what its problems are,” Zaidi said. “It’s a really good match between what the community needed and what this prize was offering.”

Caplow said Zaidi “really gave reassurance that she would be able to do exactly what she said she would do and it would have the impact that she said it would have.”

He added that he and his wife conceived of the prize after they gave birth to triplets who spent a month in an intensive care unit. The prize, which Caplow said would continue next year, was a way to address the disparities in medical technology available around the world.

Source: The Nation

How to Exercise Your Eyes

We all know how important it is to keep our bodies fit by doing things like going to the gym, jogging, and swimming. But, did you know that you can exercise your eyes as well? Eye exercising will keep your eyes healthy and help minimize eyestrain.

Note that these steps are not meant to improve your vision, but rather to maintain your best eyesight level during the day and prevent significant further vision deterioration.

1 Sit comfortably on a chair. Rub your hands together until they feel warm. Close your eyes and cover them lightly with your cupped palms. Avoid applying pressure to your eyeballs. Your nose should not be covered. Make sure no light rays can enter your eyes though gaps between your fingers or the edges of your palms and nose. You may still see other lingering traces of colors. Imagine deep blackness and focus on it. Take deep breaths slowly and evenly while thinking of some happy incident, or visualize a distant scene. After you see nothing but blackness, remove your palms from your eyes. Repeat the palming for 3 minutes or more

2 Close your eyes tightly for 3-5 seconds. Open them for 3-5 seconds. Repeat 7 or 8 times

3 Massage your eyes
Hot and Cold Compress: Soak one towel in hot water, and the other in cold. Take one and lightly press it to your face, focusing on your eyebrows, closed eyelids, and cheeks. Alternate between the two as desired, making sure to end with a cold compress.
Full Face Massage: Soak a towel in hot water. Rub your neck, forehead and cheeks with the towel, avoiding the eyes. Then, use your fingertips to gently massage your forehead and closed eyes.
Eyelid Massage: Close your eyes and massage them with circular movements of your fingers for 1-2 minutes. Make sure you press very lightly and have washed your hands to avoid damaging your eyes.

4 Lightly press three fingers of each hand against your upper eyelids. Hold them there for 1-2 seconds, then release. Repeat 5 times.

5 Sit and relax. Roll your eyes clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Repeat 5 times, blinking in between each time.

6 Focus on a distant object (over 150 feet or 50 m away) for 10-15 seconds. Then, slowly refocus your eyes on a nearby object (less than 30 feet or 10 m away) without moving your head. Focus for again for 10-15 seconds, and go back to the distant object. Do this 5 times.
Try sitting about 6 inches (15 cm) from a window. Make a mark on the glass (ideally a small red or black sticker) at eye-level. Look through this mark and focus on something far away, then adjust your focus to the mark

7 Hold a pencil in front of you at arm’s length. Move your arm slowly to your nose. Follow the pencil with your eyes until you can’t keep it in focus. Repeat 10 times.

8 Look in front of you at the opposite wall and pretend that you are writing with your eyes. Don’t move your head. This may seem difficult at first, but with a bit of practice it is really fun. The bigger the letters, the better the effect.

9 Practice rhythmic movements
Bar Swings: Stand in front of a fence, barred window, or something else with evenly spaced vertical lines. Focus loosely on a distant object on the other side of the bars. Relax your body and rhythmically transfer your weight from one foot to the other. Keep your breathing steady and relaxed. Don’t forget to blink while performing this exercise. Continue for 2-3 minutes.
Round Swings: Focus on an object in the distance that is close to the ground. Sway as instructed for Bar Swings. Keeping your gaze on the same object, use your peripheral vision to observe your surroundings as you sway. Continue for 2-3 minutes.
Head Movements: Close one eye. Slowly form a figure 8 with your head. Repeat for the other eye. Continue for 2-3 minutes.

10 Imagine that you are standing in front of a large clock. Look at the middle of the clock. Then look at any hour mark, without turning your head. Look back at the center. Then look at another hour mark. Do this at least 12 times. You can also do this exercise with your eyes closed

11 Focus on an object in the distance (as far as possible) with a low contrasting background. Do this for a few minutes every half hour or so.

12 Make up and down eye movements, starting from up to down. Do this 8 times. Then do the side to side eye movement, starting from left to right. Repeat this 8 times. Be sure not to force your eyes further than they want to go in any particular direction, or you risk making your vision worse.

13 Always finish up either with palming or another eye relaxation technique.

Watching traumatic events may cause more stress than being there

Watching television coverage of traumatic events, like the Boston Marathon bombing, for prolonged periods of time may be detrimental to your mental health.

UC Irvine researchers found that people who watched six or more hours a day of media coverage of the Boston Marathon the week following the incident were more likely to have higher levels of acute stress than those who had been at or near the event.

“We were very surprised at the degree to which repeated media exposure was so strongly associated with acute stress symptoms,” lead author E. Alison Holman, associate professor of nursing science at UC Irvine, said in a press release. “We suspect that there’s something about repeated exposure to violent images or sounds that keeps traumatic events alive and can prolong the stress response in vulnerable people. There is mounting evidence that live and video images of traumatic events can trigger flashbacks and encourage fear conditioning. If repeatedly viewing traumatic images reactivates fear or threat responses in the brain and promotes rumination, there could be serious health consequences.”

The researchers surveyed 4,675 adults two to four weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which left three people dead and more than 260 people injured. They were asked about how much acute stress they had experienced because of the bombings, how close they were to the actual bombings, how much media coverage they watched and if they had experienced any other community-based trauma. Acute stress involved unwelcome thoughts, jumpy feelings, being overly anxious about situations, avoiding situations that resemble the event and feeling detached from the event.
Those who watched six or more hours a day of bombing-related media coverage were nine times more likely to report high acute stress than those with the lowest levels of media exposure, which was about one hour a day.
“When you repeatedly see images of a person with gruesome injuries after an event is over, it’s like the event continues and has its own presence in your life,” Holman said. “Prolonged media exposure can turn what was an acute experience into a chronic form of stress. People may not realize how stressful these media-based exposures are. Looking at these images over and over again is not productive and may be harmful.”
Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University, told AFP that the research is important for media organizations to take note of, and this phenomenon — which is known as “vicarious traumatization” — has previously been seen in other studies.

Experts have also noted that children may be more vulnerable to anxiety attacks right after watching traumatic coverage of events like the Boston Marathon. Such an event may also trigger post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is categorized by prolonged mental health issues at least 30 days after an event.

PTSD sufferers may experience flashbacks, bad dreams and frightening thoughts. They may try to avoid places, events or objects that remind them of the experience, feel numb or guilty, lose of interest in activities, forget details about the about the event, be easily startled, feel tense and have difficulty sleeping.

Another study found that coverage on national disasters like superstorm Sandy can also cause anxiety in young children, and kids who have anxiety may be more likely to develop PSTD just by watching more disaster coverage.

But, Shapiro cautioned people to not jump to the conclusion that just watching traumatic events on the news on online would lead to PTSD.

“It will take further study before we know if people’s rise in acute stress symptoms turns into or feeds long-term psychological injury,” Shapiro told AFP. “It doesn’t become PTSD until the characteristic problems go on for more than six weeks and interfere in some significant way with people’s lives.”

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 9.

Source:CBS news

Blue pills may help alleviate menstrual cramps

Viagra may no longer be just for the gentlemen. A new study suggests that those little blue pills may also help women, though not in the way you might think.

Researchers have found that sildenafil citrate, the main ingredient in Viagra, Revatio and other drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction, can also be used to alleviate moderate to severe menstrual cramping in women.

“It seems counterintuitive, but what sildenafil citrate does is dilate blood vessels,” said Richard Legro, a gynecologist at Penn State College of Medicine and one of the authors of the study. “It leads to an erection in men, but in women, we think it can be an effective treatment for acute menstrual pain.”

That agonizing cramping in the pelvic area that many women experience at the start of their period is known in the scientific world as primary dysmenorrhea. It is caused by the excess production of prostaglandins, a lipid compound that tells your muscles when to relax and contract.

The extra prostaglandins that are produced at the time of menstruation are responsible for abnormal uterine contractions as well as increased sensitivity of pain receptors, the researchers explain in a study published in the journal Human Reproduction.
Legro and his colleagues hypothesized that if the blood vessels around the uterus were dilated, then the increased flow of blood might flush out those pain-causing prostaglandins.

“It’s like how a good rain can clear up smog,” Legro said.
To test their theory, the researchers ran a small trial in Croatia with 25 volunteers. The women were between the ages of 18 and 35 and all suffered from menstrual cramps. Some of the women were issued a dose of sildenafil citrate vaginally, while others were given a placebo.

The women who used the sildenafil citrate reported better overall pain relief than those who were given the placebo, although women who used the placebo also experienced significant pain relief, the researchers found. (They note that placebos often provide pain relief in such studies.)

This is just the first study to test the ability of sildenafil citrate to relieve menstrual crams, and more research needs to be done.
Legro and his team have already submitted a grant to study whether administering Viagra orally or vaginally makes a difference, as well as dosing over multiple period cycles.

Source: Los Angeles Times