WASHINGTON, Oct 19, 2007 (AFP) - The US Food and Drug Administration has decided to put more prominent warnings of potential hearing loss on impotence drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

An FDA statement said the goal was 'to display more prominently the potential risk of sudden hearing loss, and to guide consumers on what to do if they experience sudden problems with their hearing.'

Revatio, used to treat pulmonary hypertension, also will get the same labelling changes, the FDA said.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies of the United States and Martin Evans of Britain won the Nobel Medicine Prize Monday for their work in creating 'knockout mice,' the 21st-century testbed for biomedical research.

The trio, who worked independently of one another, were honoured for discovering how to genetically manipulate mouse embryonic stem cells, leading to lab rodents that replicate human disease, the Nobel jury said.

LONDON, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Martin Evans, the British co-winner of this year's Nobel Medicine Prize, hailed the award Monday as 'a boyhood dream come true.'

As tributes poured in from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others, Evans said the honour was not only for him but the two Americans he shared the prize with and the wider scientific community.

'I'm very pleased that British science is being honoured in this way. It is a pleasure and it is the highest honour in science,' he said in a statement released by his Cardiff University in the Welsh capital.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The three winners of the 2007 Nobel Medicine Prize said Monday they were delighted to share the prestigious award for research they conducted independently of one another.

'It's been a marvelous honor for the people working in the lab as well as the university,' 70-year-old Mario Capecchi of the United States told AFP.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Oliver Smithies, who on Monday won the 2007 Nobel Medicine Prize with two other scientists, is a British-born American researcher who says his love of science was inspired by a comic strip inventor.

'There was a comic strip that had an inventor in it and I thought that was neat stuff and I'd be an inventor. And that's what I've been,' Smithies, 82, once said in an interview.

He said he was seven or eight years old at the time, and 'as long as that, ever since I can remember, I wanted to be an inventor.'

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Martin Evans, one of three scientists sharing the 2007 Nobel Prize for medicine, is known as a pioneer of stem cell research, whose future offers the promise of miracle cures and treatments.

In the 1980s, Evans, 66, isolated embryonic stem cells in cancer-infected mice to try and understand the genetic workings of human disorders such as high blood pressure, the hardening of the arteries and cystic fibrosis, which makes breathing difficult.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The three winners of the 2007 Nobel Medicine Prize said Monday they were delighted to share the prestigious award for research they conducted independently of one another.

'It is a marvelous honour and a great surprise and that makes us very happy,' 70-year-old Mario Capecchi of the United States told Swedish Radio.

He shared the prize with Oliver Smithies, 82, of the US and Martin Evans, 66, of Britain, for their discoveries on how to genetically manipulate mouse embryonic stem cells, leading to lab rodents that replicate human disease.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Mario Capecchi, the Italian-born US biophysicist who Monday was honored with a Nobel Prize for medicine, said he intended to continue with his genetics research for as long as possible.

'I plan to keep working in the lab for the next 20 years. I've begun a project that will probably take 20 years, so I hope so,' he said from his home in Salt Lake City, Utah.

'Right now we do all our work in mice,' he said. 'I would like to see whether I can extend this technology to other organisms that are much more difficult to study.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Mario Capecchi, one of three scientists who on Monday won the 2007 Nobel Medicine Prize, survived the horrors of World War II in Italy before emigrating to the United States and becoming a groundbreaking scientist.

Capecchi was born in Verona, Italy, on October 6, 1937.

At the age of four, he was separated from his mother who was arrested by the German Gestapo and taken to the Dachau concentration camp.

For the next four-and-a-half years, the young Mario lived alone on the streets, fending for himself by begging and stealing.

PARIS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - One mouse is called Methuselah. Another is called Frantic.

A whiskered cousin of theirs goes by the less poetic name of p53.

These and thousands of other genetically altered -- or 'knockout' -- mice play a critical role in health research today, earning the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for the trio of humans who invented them.

Researchers depend crucially on these unsung rodents to decipher disease, devise new treatments and explore the mysteries of the genetic code.