The Old Made New: Natural Compounds against Erectile Dysfunction

The interest toward sex-related diseases keeps growing through the years. In this review, we focus our attention on erectile dysfunction (ED), a condition that caught much attention especially after the introduction on the market of phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors such as the well-known sildenafil. Here, we briefly describe both the etiology of ED and the available treatments, examining then extensively some natural derivatives that, coming from traditional medicine, could represent promising starting points for the development of alternative remedies. In fact, herbal remedies from several parts of the world have been traditionally known for long, and were recently reconsidered and are now being studied to demonstrate their eventual potential in the treatment of ED. Among the various examples reported in the literature and reviewed here, plants and extracts containing polyphenols-especially a class of compounds called kraussianones-appear to be particularly effective and promising against ED.