Impact of adenomyosis on sexual life

Women with adenomyosis have a similar magnitude of impaired sexual life as women with deep infiltrating endometriosis.

Key Points

Importance:

• Assessment of the impact of adenomyosis son different aspects of women sexual life would allow more effecive pain control.
• Clinicians should be alert about sexual problems in women with adenomyosis.

Highlights:

• Women with adenomyosis have similar sexual function impairment with women diagnosed as deep infiltrating endometriosis.

What's done here:

• The authors aimed to assess the impact of adenomyosis on the sexual life of women compared to those with deep endometriosis, by using different validated clinical questionnaires.

Key Results:

• Overall 68 women with adenomyosis, 65 women with deep infiltrating endometriosis, and 70 healthy controls were compared.
• Adenomyosis was diffuse in 71,7%, and was focal in11%. Most of the deep infiltrating endometriosis (83,7%) was located in the posterior compartment.
• The women in both groups showed a significant statistical difference in terms of parity, infertility, and the intensity of pelvic pains when compared to healthy controls.
• Abnormal uterine bleeding was statistically different only in the adenomyosis group when compared to others.
• Sexual quality of life, measured by three different questionnaires, indicated similar results for adenomyosis and deep infiltrating endometriosis groups.

Lay Summary

Considering the similar etiopathogenesis and pain symptoms between adenomyosis and deep infiltrating endometriosis, Alcalde et al. from the Department of Gynecology, University of Barcelona, Spain, aimed to call attention to the presence of potential sexual dysfunction not only in patients with deep infiltrating endometriosis but also in patients with adenomyosis.

To raise their concerns about this matter, the authors investigated and compared the charactheristics of women who were diagnosed with "adenomyosis only", with "deep infiltrating endometriosis", and the control group. This prospective, single-center comparative study was performed between 2018-2020 and the results were recently published in "Journal of Women and Health".

The questionnaires used to assess the quality of sexual life in this study were "the Brief Profile of Female Sexual Dysfunction", "the Female Sexual Distress Scale", and "the Sexual Quality of Life-Female". Using a 10 points numerical rating scale, theintensity of pelvic pain was determined.

The statistical evaluation indicated that the women with deep infiltrating endometriosis have impairment in sexual function correlated with an overall reduction in well-being and this was similar to the impairment of adenomyosis group. Dyspareunia and dyschezia were significantly associated with negative quality of sexual life in both. The study showed no correlation between poor sexual life and infertility. 

The author's conclusion was "Clinicians should be aware that the quality of sexual life may be affected in patients with adenomyosis; and targeted prevention, early diagnosis and multidisciplinary management would contribute to prevent this impairment".

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34006207/