Man Chugs Erectile Dysfunction Drug, Ends Up With Permanently Red-Tinted Vision

One man’s experience with a common erectile dysfunction drug turned out to be a lot more eye-opening than he expected. According to his doctors, he developed a seemingly permanent red tint to his color vision after taking a massive dose of sildenafil citrate.

Sildenafil is sold as a generic drug for erectile dysfunction as well as under the brand name Viagra. Despite being relatively safe, even a typically prescribed dose of sildenafil is known to sometimes cause people vision problems, such as blurred vision, increased light sensitivity, and a change in our color vision (usually blue-tinted vision). But these problems are seemingly temporary, usually lasting no more than a day.

The 31-year-old man, whose case was detailed in a report published this month in Retinal Cases, didn’t turn out to be so lucky.

According to the report, the man’s troubles began pretty soon after he took an unknown amount of liquid sildenafil he had purchased from the internet. He started seeing multicolored flashes of light, his eyes became more sensitive to light, and his vision took on a reddish tint. By the time he visited an urgent care clinic at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai two days later, the flashes had stopped. But despite receiving treatment, his red tint has remained in place for more than a year.

https://gizmodo.com/man-chugs-erectile-dysfunction-drug-ends-up-with-perma-1829471534/amp