During the month of September, Sexual Health Awareness Month, it may help to notice something: Men and their doctors have significantly more options to help with sexual function than do women and their clinicians. Moreover, .
Not convinced? Let’s take a quick tour.
The New Sexual Revolution and the Growing Anger
Around the time of the release of the book and movie Fifty Shades of Grey, Newsweek put the cultural sensation on its cover.
I bought the magazine at the airport and, while waiting for my plane, showed the story to a woman sitting next to me. “What do you think — is this the new ‘sexual revolution’?” I asked her.
She glanced at the cover and answered as accurately as if she had written the article: “In the ’60s, it became okay for women to have sex; now, it’s okay for women to demand good sex.”
I would add to that: Women are demanding good sex, and they want to define for themselves what “good” means.
That social revolution rages, still.
You would think that the demand would bring a corresponding response in clinical medicine. You would be wrong. Although efforts in some sectors are heroic, overall, the results are lagging the forward movement of women wanting better sex.
The Lag in Sexual Education
To examine the progression of the education of physicians regarding the treatment of female sexual dysfunction (FSD), Codispoti and colleagues examined the curricula of seven medical schools in and around Chicago. They found the following: Only one institution identified all anatomic components of the clitoris — one! Four of the seven discussed the physiology of the female orgasm. Only three of the seven highlighted the prevalence and epidemiology of FSD or the treatments for FSD. Only one of the seven explained how to do a genitourinary physical exam specific to assessing FSD.
When assessing obstetrics and gynecology clinical materials, sexual pleasure, arousal, and libido were not included anywhere in the curricula.
I have been teaching physicians about the therapies I developed (over 5000 clinicians in 50-plus countries over the past 14 years). During those sessions, I often stop the class and ask, “Who in here was taught how to retract the foreskin and examine the penis for phimosis?”
All hands will go up.
Then I will ask, “Who in here was taught in medical school how to retract the clitoral hood and examine the clitoris for phimosis?”
Not once has anyone raised a hand.
The Sex Remedies Gap
When I first published research offering support for using platelet-rich plasma to improve sexual function in women, women had not one drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of sexual dysfunction — none. Men had over 20. Today, men have a growing number of FDA-approved drugs for erectile dysfunction, including the “fils”; women have three.
Women have access to only one FDA-approved medication that primarily affects the genitalia: prasterone. This drug is indicated only for the treatment of pain in postmenopausal women. It does not directly enhance desire or improve orgasms. Said another way, although the incidence of sexual dysfunction is higher in premenopausal women than in other groups, they do not have a single approved medication designed to improve the function of their genitalia.
The other two of the three available drugs — flibanserin and bremelanotide — primarily affect the brain and could accurately be called psychoactive agents. They are available only for premenopausal women to improve desire. Flibanserin resulted in one extra sexual encounter per month on average, and patients are advised to avoid alcohol while using the drug. The other can make you vomit.
I do think all three of these treatments can be of great help to some women. I am not advising their disappearance. But in contrast to what is available to men, they are woefully inadequate.
Historical Perspective
In 1980, the medical establishment believed “most instances of acquired impotence are psychogenic.” Then, with the accidental discovery of the benefits of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, we realized that most cases of male sexual dysfunction involve the vasculature of the genitalia, not the neuroses of the brain. Yet, our two FDA-approved drugs for women with sexual dysfunction are designed to affect the brain. Women have nothing but off-label therapies to improve the function of the genitalia.
Despite the fact research supports the use of testosterone in women for both libido and orgasm, and despite the fact millions of women are treated with testosterone off-label for the benefit of sexual function, the only widely used FDA-approved class of drugs for women that affects testosterone — birth control pills, by blocking pituitary hormone production (the way they prevent pregnancy) — lowers the production of testosterone.
One might wonder, considering our expanded understanding of the endocrinology of both men and women, at the irony of why it is acceptable to lower the testosterone level of an adolescent girl knowingly, as if her development did not require the hormone (such would never be acceptable in an adolescent male unless sexual transitioning were the goal); yet, we are fearful of giving testosterone to grown women who can no longer make it.
Premenopausal Women: An Orphan Population
The concept of “orphan populations” can partially explain the gap in available therapies between men and women.
Women of childbearing age are risky to study; so, with testosterone, for example, it is safer and cheaper for pharmaceutical companies to prove the benefits for men and ride the profits from the off-label use for women. I don’t mean to condemn the manufacturers of testosterone, only to point out the phenomenon of why up to 30% of the prescriptions written by a primary care physician are off-label; off-label use is common among cardiologists (46%); up to 90% of children in the hospital receive at least one off-label drug; and approval of drugs for premenopausal women is more expensive than approval of drugs for men.