Testosterone Patches Boost Libido in Postmenopausal Women

Women’s sexual problems — whether they care about them and, if they do, how to solve them –are the subject of two scientific studies that get to the heart of what qualifies as a medical disorder and what risks might be involved in taking drugs to treat them. New research in the Nov. 6 New England Journal of Medicine suggests that boosting levels of the male sex hormone testosterone can help postmenopausal women with low libido get back in the mood.
The trial was sponsored by Procter & Gamble Co., the Cincinnati-based maker of a testosterone patch called Intrinsa that is approved for sale to women in Europe and not in the U.S. More than 800 women who had reported personal distress linked with low desire were recruited for the study.

In a study of more than 800 postmenopausal women with low sexual desire, researchers found that wearing a patch that delivers a daily dose of testosterone boosts libido and increases the number of satisfying sexual encounters. Studies show that between nine and 43 per cent of postmenopausal women have low sex drives due to lower sex-hormone levels.
The research showed that:
- Women who received a daily dose of 150 micrograms of testosterone reported an increase in levels of sexual desire.
- Women who received 300 micrograms of testosterone daily reported having a healthier libido as well as experiencing an average of 2.1 satisfying sexual episodes per month, compared to only 0.7 among a placebo group.

In surveys, between 10% and 30% of post-menopausal women typically report low sexual desire, although some doubt whether the condition should be considered a medical disorder.
Women in the study, who averaged 54 years old, were asked to keep a weekly diary of sexual episodes and note which ones they considered “satisfying.” About 264 women wore Intrinsa patches, to be placed near the belly button and changed twice a week, and 277 wore fake patches.
All the women started out with low sexual desire, and reported an average of 2.5 “satisfying sexual episodes” over the previous four weeks. After six months, women wearing Intrinsa reported 4.6 satisfying episodes in the previous four weeks, compared with 3.2 in a group wearing a fake patch.

Shifren and her colleagues asked more than 31,000 women if they had difficulties with desire, arousal, or orgasm and whether these problems caused them unhappiness. About 43 percent said they had one or more problems, but only 12 percent said they were troubled by them.
“You could certainly argue that something that occurs in 40 percent of otherwise healthy women is probably normative and we shouldn’t be calling it a disorder,” Shifren said in an interview.

In this study, 267 women were assigned to receive transdermal testosterone at 150 g/day, 267 were treated with the patch testosterone at 300 g/day, and a third group of 277 women received placebo. The patches (Intrinsa, Procter & Gamble) were applied to the abdomen twice a week. The group assignments were all random and neither the patients nor the clinicians knew what each group was given.
At 24 weeks, an increase in the frequency of satisfying sexual episodes was significantly greater in the group receiving the 300 g testosterone dose than the placebo group, but not significantly greater in the group that received the lower dose of testosterone.

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