Bad news, folks. Palatin (the company behind this drug) have released some trial results for PT-141, and things aren't looking as rosy as they have been. It's bad enough for their shares to fall by 10%. Chemgasm reports this informative comment from a post on the Yahoo finance forums:

This was supposed to be a N=560 and an N=250 trial.

They had to power it up to N=726 and N=294.

If they had not powered it up, they would have *MISSED*. Capice? The results were not as good as they were anticipating, so they added more subjects. OK?

There are *TWO* new side effects. One esophogeal tear. That is your throat ripping apart because you are vomiting so hard

More technical detail on the trials here

No new content today, just a nod that you should go have a look at the Bremelanotide Bulletin for some informative posts. It hasn't been updated for a few months, but I'm sure it'll be back as new information comes out.

What are the side effects of bremelanotide? The factsheet by Palatin (the makers of Pt-141) says they "include facial flushing, nausea, aftertaste and post-nasal drip". Headaches also get mentioned, particularly in women.

Chemgasm describes the flushing like this:

At 20 minutes post-dose, it peaked. Face had flushed scarlet red, my chest was somewhat red too, little pricks of red (allergy-like) appeared on my arms and chest and face. I experienced that hot-from-the-inside feeling one gets the night after being in the sun all day. Over the next ten-twenty minutes, the flush subsided.

All this might not sound so bad compared to, say, Viagra's "priapism, severe hypotension, myocardial infarction, ventricular arrhythmias, sudden death, stroke and increased intraocular pressure".

But remember that it's early days yet, and more side-effects are going to be coming out of the woodwork pretty soon.

Now, it's time to meet the enthusiasts. Let's go on a quick tour of the people who are already using Bremelanotide, or who are dreaming of it.

First stop is social network site Tribe, where the aphrodisiacs group are more than a little sceptical of the sites claiming to sell Bremelanotide.

The forums over a melanotan.org have been buzzing about the power of PT-141 for a good six months now. Several of them have been actively experimenting with the drug, and they're pretty positive about it.

If you want to know what blogs are talking about bremelanotide, you could do worse than searching Technorati. You'll find a lot of dross, but you'll also run into gems like Menz News, a blog which is actually (for once) trying to provide serious, honest information about using "science for better sex". Heartily recommended. He already has a couple of posts on PT-141, including a financial analyst's report on it.

Note: this is probably as good a time as any to make it very clear that I'm not a doctor, and I can't say what bad things trying Bremelanotide could do to you. I'm certainly not advising anybody to try it before the end of the clinical trials.

In the first post below I mentioned Julian Dibbell's article in the New York Magazine back in December 2005. In a way, this is the article that brought PT-141 onto the public radar. Looking back at it, it's still a damn good piece of writing. Here are some of the juicy bits:

Julian says that the value of PT-141 is that whereas viagra works on the body, this works by getting your emotions going:

You’ve been there yourself, after all: a third or fourth date, a late night of rich food, hard liquor, mildly exhausting erotic tension. Can you admit to yourself now, however hungrily you may have anticipated the evening’s scheduled consummation, that there was a part of you, when the moment arrived, that really would have rather been at home watching CSI

So far, so good. But then we get into the tangle of corporate interest and material culture that can deaden even sex:

I see a lot of couples in my practice—lawyer couples, banker couples—who don’t know how to relax,” says Leonore Tiefer, a professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. “That’s fine—it’s a big asset to them in their corporate lifestyle, where they can work 80 hours a week—but then I have to shut off two BlackBerrys in my office in order to keep the noise down. They’re trained to multitask. Well, it doesn’t seem that that is really doable when it comes to sex. And they’re angry about that: It should be doable. And they need it to be doable because they only have five minutes.”

Is that really what we want? Given a wonder drug, are we going to turn it into mere efficiency?

I strongly suggest reading the entire article, if you have any interest in PT-141. It's the best introduction you're going to find, for now.

All the signs are that the next couple of years are going to see some big hullaboloo over PT-141. PT-141 (also known as Bremelanotide) is the coming wonder-drug, supposedly a powerful aphrodisiac. The Observer and New York Mag have articles giving some of the backstory.

Why dedicate a blog to it? Because, as I said, there's going to be a lot of hype. There are going to be a lot of confused, desperate people, and there are going to be a lot of con-men out to make a quick buck. I want to make it easier for people to get the genuine information on PT-141, follow what's going on, decide if it is the right thing for them, and stay safe.

So, I'm going to be following the news reports, the scientific evidence, the government policies and the popular reaction. And I'll be trying to help make sense of it all