NEW ORLEANS — Hormone levels are weakly associated with sexual desire during the menopausal transition, while other sexual desire predictors are more important, according to an analysis of data from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation.
Study investigator Dr. John Randolph, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, cautioned that while researchers found a significant association between women's sexual desire and their levels of testosterone and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), the association was small.
“It's biologically significant but probably not clinically significant—and I'm worried how this information might be misinterpreted,” he said at a press conference during the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The study found that satisfaction with an existing relationship and ethnicity were much stronger predictors of sexual desire.
The multicenter, multiethnic study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, included 3,302 women who were still menstruating at baseline, and followed them with annual serum hormone measurements and sexual desire questionnaires. The aim was to determine the role of hormone fluctuations over time in changing sexual desire over the menopausal transition. Testosterone, estradiol, FSH, dehydroepiandrosterone, and sex hormone-binding globulin were among the hormones measured.
Data were available from 3,290 women who had up to six annual serum hormone measurements and sexual desire questionnaires. The researchers found that higher testosterone levels and lower levels of FSH were associated with higher levels of sexual desire, and vice versa, Dr. Randolph reported.