Conditions: Metabolic Syndrome Obesity
Keywords: African American Women Metabolic Syndrome Endothelial function Sildenafil citrate
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 46
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Obesity has a greater detrimental impact on the health of African American women than on any other racial or gender group. Nearly 80% of African American women are overweight or obese in the United States. Hypertension and insulin resistance are more prevalent among African American women as compared to men and Caucasians. These conditions put them at increased risk for the development of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease.

Recent studies have reported that a substance named Nitric Oxide (NO)may have some beneficial effect on how the body handles blood sugar and blood pressure. Of interest,some studies have shown that African Americans have decreased function of NO in their blood vessels.

In this study proposal the investigators will test if increasing NO function with a PDE-5 inhibitor (sildenafil citrate) will improve pre-diabetes and the health of the inner layer of the blood vessels in obese African American women.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Sildenafil 20 mg three times a day arm 2: placebo

Interventions: intervention 1: Sildenafil intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 20 mg three times a day. intervention 2: No active drug

Protocol document: