Sexual desire elusive for many women

It’s the biggest sexual problem women have, and the little blue pill doesn’t seem to help.

Viagra – the medication that enables male erections – doesn’t enhance sexual interest among women taking anti-depressants, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says.

The drug does help women taking the drugs have orgasms more frequently, the JAMA study reports. And it does engorge the clitoris, although this doesn’t yield higher sexual satisfaction, other research shows.

But desire, that elusive flame that propels women toward sexual partners, remains untouched, according to this new study and earlier research by Pfizer Inc., the company that makes the medication.

Viagra “doesn’t have any effect on libido," Robert Taylor Seagraves, a psychiatry professor at Case Western University, told US News & World Report.

"It doesn’t work for desire," echoed Lillian Arleque, 62, a Viagra user and the author of “When Sex Isn’t Good,” quoted in today’s Baltimore Sun. "When you take Viagra it increases blood flow to your genitals. It increases sensation."

Just how big a problem is a lack of interest in sex among women?

A study in last week’s Archives of Internal Medicine shines new light on the question.

Researchers conducted phone surveys of 2,207 women age 30 to 70 and found that 36.2 percent – or more than one out of every three women – admitted to tepid sexual desire in the last 30 days. All the women had been in a steady relationship at least three months.

The finding is consistent with earlier studies. For instance, when University of Chicago sociologist Edward Laumann asked U.S. women about sex in a landmark 1999 study, also published in JAMA, 32 percent reported having low libidos. (By contrast, 15 to 17 percent of men acknowledged a diminished sex drive.)

Another study of 1,355 Swedish woman between the ages of 18 and 74 that year found that 33 percent reported low sexual desire "quite often," "nearly all the time" or "all the time."

And two years ago, in a survey of 2,050 U.S. women published in the journal Menopause, researchers found that 24 percent to 36 percent reported a distinct lack of sexual interest, depending on their age and menopausal status.

The new Archives of Internal Medicine review also documents declining interest in sex for a significant number of women after menopause.

(The study was funded by Procter & Gamble, which wants to sell a testosterone patch for women in the U.S. It’s already available in Europe.)

Of women who entered menopause naturally as a result of aging, 52.4 percent confirmed low levels of desire. By contrast, 26.7 percent of women still getting their periods and 39.7 percent of women in menopause because of surgical interventions (removal of the ovaries) found themselves without sexual urges.

What’s going on?

Changing hormones, which are disrupted through menopause, may explain some of the falloff in sexual interest, says Suzanne West, the study’s lead author and senior public health researcher at RTI International. And clearly, the quality of women’s relationships may be a factor, although this study doesn’t examine inter-personal influences, she adds.

Particularly notable is a somewhat surprising finding: Most women who experience subdued desire don’t seem particularly perturbed about it.

Indeed, only one-quarter of the women who said they weren't inclined toward sex were disturbed by their lack of feeling. Distress levels were lowest among women in natural menopause and highest among women in surgical menopause........ Source http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/triage/2008/07/sexual-desire-e.html