Testosterone makes women friskier -- but should it be prescribed?
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Testosterone ramps up women’s sexual desires, according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Procter & Gamble-funded study -- with the acronym APHRODITE -- involved 814 women treated at 65 different locations in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Sweden and the U.K. All of the women had what is medically referred to as ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’ -- a chronic lack of interest in sexual activity. Study participants received 150 micrograms or 300 micrograms of testosterone a day delivered via a patch, or a placebo patch with no testosterone in it. Nobody (clinicians or women) knew who got what until the end of the study.
Other stats: The study ran for 52 weeks, and the effectiveness of the treatment was evaluated up to 24 weeks into it. The scientists gauged effectiveness as a change in frequency of ‘satisfying sexual episodes’ within four-week periods. Safety was monitored for the entire 52 weeks and a subset of the women were tracked for even longer. None of the women took estrogen; all had passed menopause.
The results: The group given 300-microgram patches experienced an uptick in satisfying sexual episodes that was measurable as early as the second month of treatment. They had, on average, 2.1 more such episodes per four-week period (compared with 0.7 more for the placebo group)--almost a doubling. But both testosterone groups said they felt more sexual desire than the placebo group did, as well as less distress. The results, to the authors, indicated a ‘modest but meaningful improvement in sexual function’ for the 300-microgram group.
That doesn’t mean the patch should be handed out willy nilly. There do appear to be some side effects: irritation where the patch is applied, and when the patch contained testosterone, increased facial hair growth. Four patients getting testosterone developed breast cancer, but the authors say it’s not clear that this was due to chance or was related in some way to the hormone: one of the woman had symptoms before she began the trial.
Earlier studies had shown that testosterone can increase sexual desire in women taking estrogen: this one shows that it helps for those who do not. This was a longer trial than most have been as well.
In a related editorial, Julia R. Heiman of the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University writes that the sexual improvements were ‘good news’ and notes that the facial hair side effects didn’t seem to lead to women dropping out of the trial. But the breast cancer cases are of concern, she says. ‘The apparent excess of cases in the testosterone groups could simply be due to chance (the size of the groups is too small to allow for analysis) but this potentially worrisome signal cannot be ignored,’ she says. She suggests a ‘need for caution in using testosterone until we understand more about its possible link with breast cancer and are better able to predict which patients are more likely to be subject to negative effects.’
Heiman’s editorial also mentions that estimates of low sexual desire prevalence in women range from 25% to 53%. She also notes that it’s not always a problem for those who report it. How many do get upset? Here’s a recent blog entry on a study examining that.
-- Rosie Mestel