Readout · Vienna
Clock the tablet. Hold the nitrate. Then compare.
Tadalafil 20 mg as needed, sildenafil 25 mg as a first swallow, vardenafil 5 mg as a usual start. Helion prints the label clocks and the one contraindication that ends the visit. No storefront. No sponsored ranking.
How a readout is built
Clock, hold, trace, sign
Every Helion page runs the same four moves. The order is the point: timing first, the nitrate list second, a named trial third, then a named urologist signs the mailbag.
Clock
Onset, food, half-life, and how long a rescue nitrate still has to wait. If the hour is wrong, the milligram does not save the evening.
Hold
Nitrates and riociguat close the script. A cheap coupon does not reopen it. Vardenafil also carries a QT screen before the 5 mg start.
Trace
Named trials and label tables, not forum lore. We keep the leftover claim in view so a viral use does not borrow an ED tablet.
Sign
Dr. Sofia Brandt answers the reader thread. The answer is teaching. It is not a plan built for the person who wrote in.
Analysis
Five notes before you pick a strength
Start with the three-way PDE5 clock comparison, then the schedule split, the 25 mg food delay, who a 5 mg Levitra start actually fits, and the ED work-up that should sit in front of any tablet.
A 5 mg vardenafil start after the QT check
Rhythm drugs close vardenafil before onset even starts. Congenital long QT, quinidine, procainamide, amiodarone or sotalol: pick a…
TimingWhy a 25 mg sildenafil tablet waits on dinner
Most failed 25 mg doses were swallowed after steak. The Viagra label still allows food. It also publishes the delay: Tmax later by…
Schedule20 mg once, or a small daily tablet?
Frequency of sex decides the tadalafil schedule. The as-needed lock on this site is 20 mg. The daily habit is a different, smaller…
Work-upWork-up first: what ED is pointing at
A soft erection is often a vessel finding first. Penile arteries are small. They clog early. AUA notes that ED symptoms can preced…
ComparisonThree PDE5 clocks: 20 mg, 25 mg, 5 mg
Men rank these tablets by brand strength. The useful split is the clock: how soon a peak arrives, how long a useful level lasts, a…
Profiles
Three labeled strengths, three different jobs
20 mg tadalafil is the long as-needed lock. 25 mg sildenafil is the first swallow that still punishes fries. 5 mg vardenafil is the usual start that still needs a QT look. Each page ends with a licensed US fill insert and a reader thread.
Clear the QT line, then start vardenafil at 5 mg
Before a 5 mg vardenafil film tablet, the QT line has to be clean. Congenital long QT and Class IA or III antiarrhythmics (quinidine, procainamide, am…
Open the profile → PDE5 inhibitorA 20 mg tadalafil dose covers the weekend after the nitrate hold
Twenty milligrams of tadalafil, taken as needed, keeps a usable erection window open for up to 36 hours after the dose. That is the Helion as-needed l…
Open the profile → PDE5 inhibitorTake the first 25 mg sildenafil tablet away from a fatty meal
A first sildenafil tablet on this site is 25 mg, taken away from a high-fat meal. Fasted peak plasma sits at a median of 60 minutes (range 30 to 120).…
Open the profile →The clinician
Sofia Brandt signs every readout
Vienna urology and sexual medicine. She checks the label, writes the mailbag, and will not soften the nitrate line. Helion does not sell the tablet she is describing.
Where the numbers come from
Labs and labels the readouts lean on
Sandwich, Bothell, Wuppertal, Boston sexual medicine, FDA, EMA. If a page and a current label disagree, the label wins.
Former Pfizer Discovery Laboratories
Ramsgate Road, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9NJ, United Kingdom
The Kent research site where sildenafil began life as UK-92,480, a candidate for angina. The angina numbers were unremarkable; the erection reports in the trial diaries were not, and Pfizer redrew the entire programme around erectile dysfunction. Much of the modern PDE5 story starts on this road.
ICOS Corporation (historic)
22021 20th Avenue SE, Bothell, WA 98021, USA
The Washington biotech that characterised tadalafil and teamed with Eli Lilly to carry it through late-stage trials. Their molecule cleared the body far more slowly than its rivals, and that single pharmacokinetic quirk became Cialis — the long-window tablet the whole category now measures itself against.
Bayer AG
Aprather Weg 18a, 42113 Wuppertal, Germany
The Wuppertal laboratories that developed vardenafil, later sold as Levitra and as the orodispersible Staxyn tablet. Their compound is the most potent PDE5 inhibitor per milligram of the three, which is why its labelled doses read so much smaller than sildenafil's.
Institute for Sexual Medicine, Boston University
720 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02118, USA
Housed at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, this group runs the clinical sexual-medicine research the desk leans on when the question moves past chemistry — vascular risk, hormones, and what a realistic response to treatment actually looks like in the clinic.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA
The American regulator whose approved prescribing information sets the doses, boxed cautions and interaction rules we quote. When a page here and a current FDA label disagree, the label is the authority — the nitrate contraindication above all.
European Medicines Agency
Domenico Scarlattilaan 6, 1083 HS Amsterdam, Netherlands
The EU agency whose scientific assessments and product information sit alongside the FDA label in our sourcing. Its reviews are especially useful for the European brands and for the reasoning behind each approved indication.
Last Updated
Helion Rx
Three tablets for one problem, laid side by side without a sales pitch.
Each profile is drawn from the prescribing label and the trials, the comparison tables are only here where they change a decision, and a working urologist answers the questions a patient information leaflet leaves hanging.
Browse the profiles