Testosterone Patches to Increase Women's Sex Drive

It's a fact that men are so horny because of testosterone. Now, women could benefit from this, too.

A new study shows that women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), characterized by persistent or recurrent deficiency and/or lack of sexual fantasies/thoughts/desire or absence of sexual receptivity) show significant improvement in sexual drive and sexual life after experiencing low level testosterone treatment.

Two randomized double-blind, placebo controlled approaches in surgically postmenopausal (due to uterus and ovaries removal, linked to cancers) women with HSDD showed that transdermal testosterone patch treatment improved significantly the rate of satisfying sexual contacts and libido, while hampering sexual distress.

132 subjects from the 2 trials stated that 6-month after the treatment period, they have experienced a high increase in frequency of satisfying sexual activity and sexual drive: an average rise in sexual activity of 4.4 times per 4 weeks. Placebo women reported just a 0.5 increase in activity per 4 weeks.

"More women on testosterone experienced a meaningful benefit (52 % vs. 31 %) and, in fact, the odds of experiencing a meaningful benefit on testosterone were 2.4 times greater than that of placebo," said lead author Sheryl Kingsberg.

As the subjects could assess by themselves if the treatment was beneficial or not, those perceiving the treatment as beneficial kept on following it. "These findings not only confirm the clinical effectiveness of transdermal testosterone, but provide benchmarks for the degree of improvement in sexual function that all future therapies for this disorder should try to attain," said co-author Jan Shifren.

"This is an especially relevant clinical study in the field of sexual medicine. These important data reinforce the positive value that treatment with the low dose testosterone patch can bring to the quality-of-life of surgically post-menopausal women with HSDD.", said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine.