It has to do with a new gel that will be rubbed directly in the penis and according to the announcement will be sold without medical prescription.

The treatment, called MED2002, it is being developed by the companies Future Medical and GlaxoSmithKline and will be put on clinical tests by the end of the 2006.

"If it demonstrates that it's effective, this treatment could be very useful for the great number of men who undergo this disorder" said Doctor Andrés Flores-Colombino, professor of clinical sexology at the Universidad La Republica in Uruguay .

The MED2002 is based on a compound called glycerol trinitrate (GTN), which has been used to treat angina during the pasts 40 years. It is known that GTN causes expansion in the arteries increasing the blood flow.

According to Future Medical, the MED2002 has had good results in previous tests in Vitro. The company now tries to recruit about 1,500 men to participate in other three clinical tests. Also the effect will be tested in the women that have contact with the drug.

According to the civil employees of the pharmaceutical company, the treatment will not require medical prescription because GTN "is a known compound or and their indirect effect or well catalogued".

70% of the erectile dysfunction cases have physical causes and 30% psychological causes. Most of the men who are affected do not undergo for treatment, it is believed that only one of five individuals goes to the doctor. It is why, if it's effective, the treatment could be very useful by being available without medical prescription.

"I believe that if it is a drug of local action and which does not have contraindications, it will surely be very successful ", stated Flores .

"A product that directly causes vascular expansion by local application is going to have a series of advantages that do not have available products at the moment. For example, it will be much more easy to use", the doctor said.

The new gel, that -it is said- could be available in supermarkets and pharmacies in 2009, could be the direct competition of the oral treatments available at the moment such as Viagra, Levitra and Cialis.

It is calculated that about 152 million men undergo slight and moderate impotence in the world. And this number, the experts say, will be duplicated in the next two decades.