Editorial PDE 5 Inhibitors : Is There More to Come besides Erectile

To predict the future in research is impossible because already an adequate appreciation of today’s research is most difficult as I know from personal experience. My pre-predecessor, Prof. E. Schmiedt, invented extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) with his group [1]. He told me that when they sent their first abstracts to the American Urological Associationtheywererejectedfor2consecutiveyears because their results were considered ‘‘unbelievable.’’ Regarding our topic for today, I had a similar experience with phosphodiesterases (PDEs) in erectile dysfunction (ED). When we applied for the poster prize of the International Society for Impotence Research in 1992 with an experimental study indicating that ‘‘PDE inhibitors are promising drugs for the treatment of ED’’ [2] (at least 12 mo before submission of the Viagra patent application), we were not even attributed the third poster prize because ‘‘this work is in such a remote basic experimental field that it will never have any clinical application’’ (wording of the prize committee chairman). So I will base my forecasts not on speculations but on solid results published during the last 2 yr. Here, PDE inhibitors seem to have great potential both for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) as well as for Peyronie’s disease.