RESEARCH PRIORITY AND CURRENT EVIDENCE OF ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION HERBAL REMEDIES IN PERSIAN MEDICINE

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a frequent cause of medical advice from health care professional's especially general practitioners, urologists, and psychologists; however, countless patients care about benefiting from other sources including alternative and traditional medicines, social beliefs or advertisements. The big business of herbal aphrodisiacs besides lack of efficacy and safety information has led to several studies designed to evaluate this claims. Unfortunately, the majority of studies are planned to assess the effect of a single plant in specific pathway –like PDE5 inhibition- while ED involves complex neuroendocrine pathways, and each plant, having numerous bioactive substances, engages in various biological systems. This challenge of mentioning the importance of periodic evaluation of published evidence and advice research priority; had led to this study design. In this investigation, all materials recommended for ED by Persian Medicine (PM) in pharmacopoeia texts were identified, each one of 210 resulted plants was counted in PM clinical texts as a proof of description by clinicians (not only pharmacologists), this method decreased the number of recommended plants to 65 items (31%) and achieved quantitative priority for further research. In addition, all 210 plants were searched in PubMed® database to inspect current scientific data and evidence for ED management, the results were 106 articles in relation to only 22 plants (10%) that are less than sufficient to make clinical decision; however, this end result proves a call for research priority studies. Key words: Erectile dysfunction; Persian medicine; Arabic medicine; herbal medicine; drug discovery