Acute and Prolonged Effects of Sildenafil on Brachial Artery Flow-Mediated Dilatation in Type 2 Diabetes

In a recent article by Desouza et al. (1), an improvement of brachial artery flow-mediated vasodilatation, a measurement indicating endothelium-dependent vasodilation, was reported with both acute and prolonged sildenafil treatment. No measurements of endothelium-independent vasodilation were performed. As the administration of sublingual nitroglycerin is mainly used to evaluate endothelium-independent vasodilation, it is understandable that possible side effects related to the concomitant use of sildenafil and nitroglycerine were the main reason for omitting this measurement. However, we believe that although the presented data are very interesting, they …