A 'women's viagra' that is hoped to boost flagging libido may soon be available.
The new pill, called Lybrido, uses a combination of testosterone and a Viagra-like drug in a bid to increase sexual desire and improve sexual satisfaction.
The drug is hoped to be on sale within three years.
Viagra has proved to be an extremely profitable drug, with worldwide sales at nearly £1.5 billion a year.
Scientists have so far struggled to create a female version of the drug, however, because while Viagra has a physiological action on men, increasing female arousal depends as much upon psychological as physical factors.
Dutch firm Emotional Brain claims to have developed a pill that resolves this dilemma by combining a Viagra-like drug with testosterone.
The physical effect of Viagra magnifies the effect of testosterone on the brain's pleasure centres, and the pill should be taken three and a half hours before sex to have an effect.
The results of a trial involving more than 200 women have not yet been published, although Emotional Brain founder Adriaan Tuiten describes them as "very, very promising".
A larger trial is planned and it is hoped that the drug will be on the market in Europe and the US at the end of 2016.
Dr Tuiten claims that the pills enable women to make love more often and improved their chances of reaching orgasm.
He believes that they will be most popular with long-married women who tend to experience a drastic decline in sexual desire over time.
Dr Andrew Goldstein, a US expert in female sexual health, told the New York Times that drug companies such as Emotional Brain will be under pressure to prove they are not turning women into nymphomaniacs.
There are also fears that Lybrido could put women under pressure to perform, while sceptics of the drug point to the myriad of cultural factors that have a bearing on libido.
Dr Tuiten says that up to 43 per cent of women suffer from a low sex drive at some point in their lives and that, far from turning women into sex maniacs, the drug will simply raise a low libido to normal levels.
Dr Mike Wyllie, one of the team of scientists that discovered and developed the male impotence drug Viagra, described Lybrido as "an interesting concept".
