Sexual Function in Women With Endometriosis

Sexual impairments in women with endometriosis are multifactorial, a new study found.

Key Points

Highlights: 

• Sexual impairments in women in endometriosis are multifactorial and are associated with deep disease, depression level, age, and unemployment.

Importance:

• The study adds a multidimensional perspective of sexual function in women with endometriosis.

What's done here:

• A multicentre cross-sectional study that analyzes sexual function in a sample of almost 200 Spanish women with endometriosis.
• The Female Sexual Function Inventory (FSFI) was used for scoring sexual desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain.

Key results:

• The median FSFI score of women with endometriosis was below the normal sexual function score, meaning that their sexual function was impaired.
• Predictive factors for poor sexual function were deep endometriosis, depression, age, and unemployment.

Limitations:

• The sample size was relatively low.
• There was no control group so it was not possible to say that there is a causal link between sexual function and other factors.
• The sexual function of the women’s partners was not taken into account.

Lay Summary

The sexual function of women diagnosed with endometriosis is impaired confirmed a new study by Spanish researchers published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. According to the study, the strongest predictive factors for poor sexual function are deep disease, depression, age, and unemployment.

Sexual function is defined as the way the body reacts in different stages of the sexual response cycle. Recent research has shown that endometriosis has a negative impact on a woman’s sexual quality of life. The disease can also affect a woman’s social and sexual relationships, work, study, and mental health.

In the present study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Daniel María Lubián-López of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University Hospital of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, assessed the sexual function of Spanish women with endometriosis in relation to employment status, age, depth of disease and psychological factors such as depression, which may influence sexual function including sexual arousal, lubrication, and orgasm as well as sexual satisfaction.

To this aim, the team conducted a multicenter cross-sectional study in 196 Spanish women with endometriosis. They used the  Female Sexual Function Inventory (FSFI) to analyze the women’s sexual function. The FSFI is is a widely-used measure of female sexual dysfunction that assesses six domains. These are sexual desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain.

The results showed that the women’s mean FSFI score was 22.5. The cutoff score for normal sexual function is 26.5. Factors that influenced the women’s sexual function included physical pain and dyspareunia. However, the authors said that sexual impairment was multifactorial.

“The best fit predictive model included deep endometriosis, depression level, age, and unemployment, which were strong predictive factors,” they wrote.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34768476/