Real deal: North Korea’s little ‘herbal’ blue pill contains same active ingredient as Viagra
The pill, marketed as an herbal product, could become a potential source of revenue as Pyongyang looks for new ways to fund its weapons development programme
North Korea has made some eye-popping claims over the years about its pharmaceutical products. Like the injections that cure everything from bird and camel flu to diabetes and “spontaneous gangrene”.
And like “Neo-Viagra”, North Korea’s purportedly herbal version of Pfizer’s superstar medicine. According to the box, it not only counteracts “sexual dysfunction” in both men and women, but relieves back pain and high blood pressure.
Well, chuckle no more. It turns out that Neo-Viagra might actually work.
A Washington Post reporter visiting Pyongyang in May bought a box of the North Korean-produced medicine to treat erectile dysfunction, then sent it to a Pfizer lab in Massachusetts to be tested.
Surprisingly, each dose of Neo-Viagra – brown granules in a vial that looks like traditional Korean medicine – turned out to contain 50 milligrams of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. The genuine little blue Viagra pills come in 50 and 100mg doses.
The only real difference between pharmacists in North and South is infrastructure – in the North they don’t have electricity or raw ingredients, but their technical skills are good
“Lab analysis of the product known as ‘Neo-Viagra’ ... did detect the presence of sildenafil,” said Yasar Yaman, Asia-Pacific director for Pfizer’s global security team. “Sildenafil is the active ingredient in Viagra, however this is a different formulation to the sildenafil found in authentic Pfizer tablets.”