Maybe this will give Pfizer stock a lift, too. Women with sexual dysfunction caused by the use of antidepressants experienced a drop in adverse sexual effects by taking Viagra, according to a small study of 98 patients in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As the Pfizer-funded study notes, antidepressants can disturb sexual functioning, which is estimated to occur in 30 percent to 70 percent of men and women treated for major depression with antidepressants. And this causes many people to stop taking the meds. In other words, if Pfizer’s Zoloft relieves your depression, but sidelines your libido, then just pop a different Pfizer pill.

The researchers found that 73 percent of women taking placebo, compared with 28 percent taking Viagra reported no improvement with treatment. While 72 percent of the women taking Viagra reported improvement on an overall scale, only 27 percent of those on placebo reported improvement. The average age, by the way, was 37, and this was a randomized, controlled, eight-week trial. Here is the abstract.

“For women on antidepressants with orgasm problems, this may provide some wonderful relief,” Stan Althof, director of the Center for Marital and Sexual Health of South Florida in West Palm Beach, who was not involved in the study, tells the Associated Press. “But it will not improve their desire or arousal.”

A Pfizer spokeswoman tells the Associated Press there are no plans to pursue FDA approval for using Viagra to treat female sexual dysfunction, and internal research on Viagra for women ended in 2004. While Viagra was found to be safe, the results were inconclusive, she adds.

Psychologist Leonore Tiefer of New York University School of Medicine tells the AP that industry-funded research has oversimplified women’s sexual experience. She noted the new study found more side effects than benefits. Althof calls it “worrisome” that 43 percent of the women on Viagra experienced headaches, compared to 27 percent of women on placebo. Indigestion and reddening of skin (flushing) also were reported more often by the women taking Viagra.

“We’re not talking about a lifestyle issue. We’re talking about a medical necessity issue,” George Nurnberg of the University of New Mexico School of Medicie in Albuquerque, tells the AP> And he adds that Pfizer had no influence on the design, findings or manuscript. He and several of the other authors disclosed financial ties to Pfizer and other drugmakers.