Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

The World Health Organization recognizes sexual dysfunction as an important medical condition, yet the most significant treatment for erectile dysfunction (ED), Viagra, only temporarily restores sexual activity. Situational treatment has no known long-term impact on the underlying blood vessel disease, which is the most commonly recognized cause of ED. Furthermore, ED is now known to be one of the first symptoms in cardiovascular disease (CVD), which accounts for a third of deaths, globally. The scope of this proposal involves assessing drug and lifestyle treatment strategies traditionally used in managing high blood pressure (hypertension) as therapies to improve ED by normalizing the blood vessels that supply the genitals. We are also working to characterize the link between decreases in obesity, specifically abdominal obesity and improved erectile function. Using three different strains of rats: (normal, hypertensive and hypertensive-obese) at various ages, we will assess the actions and time course of different treatments (e.g. caloric restriction (CR)) and how they change the structure of blood vessels in the body, particularly those supplying the genitals. Improvements in sexual responses, effects on blood pressure, fat placement, metabolism and changes to various tissues (i.e. the heart) during and after treatments; at whole animal, as well as organ and cell levels will be examined. The vessels supplying the sexual-response tissue will be taken out to assess structural and functional changes. Our studies will be the first to determine the processes involved in improving sexual responses after antihypertensive drug therapy and CR treatments as well as the specific relationship between abdominal obesity and ED. By examining how hypertension, age and obesity alter this vessel, we may be able to permanently reverse the pathological changes associated with them and improve sexual function.