Here, Professor Davis talks about the role of the hormone DHEA in normal sexual function of women.
To read the full transcript, go here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1421757.htm 25 July 2005
Program Transcript
Norman Swan: Researchers in Melbourne have looked at a large group of women of all ages, and asked them about things like desire, arousal and orgasm and compared that to their androgen levels, their male-type hormones.
Susan Davis: The context of the study is trying to understand whether there’s a relationship between hormones and sexual function in women.
Norman Swan: There are people who’ve suggested there’s this condition called female androgen insufficiency syndrome; what is that?
Susan Davis: Well the idea is that some women have very, very low androgen levels, and androgens are things like testosterone, and that this results in symptoms, particularly low sexual function and low well-being, and the aim of our study was to look at women with low sexual function and see if they had different hormone levels to women who did not have low sexual function. What we found was for women over the age of 45 a significant proportion reported zero sexual function.
Norman Swan: Zero? Is that because she’s simply not having sex?
Susan Davis: That wasn’t the point. With desire, you don’t have to have sex, whether or not you have sexual desires, sexual desire is something you can have even if you’re not sexually active. But if you report zero desire, you can be active or not active, but zero is zero. For the younger women, for three of the areas, 5% of women reported zero scores.
Norman Swan: And you looked at one of the precursors, one of the building blocks for testosterone, DHEAS, or DHEA –which in fact some people are taking as a complementary medicine. What did you find there?
Susan Davis: What we found is that the likelihood that a woman with low sexual function has a low DHEA sulphate was about four- to fivefold times a woman without low sexual function. So if a woman presents with low sexual function and you measure her DHEA sulphate, the probability is it’s going to be low.
Norman Swan: So what you’re finding out is when you look at the precursor of both oestrogen and testosterone, there may be a relationship but it’s not strong in an individual, it’s more of a generalisable phenomenon. I mean doesn’t that point to a suggestion that women with sexual problems, it’s largely not hormonal, it’s more psychological?
Susan Davis: No, the demonstrates are reversed, because the fact that we found that low sexual function was associated with low levels of this DHEA sulphate hormone, that tells us that this does make a significant contribution to sexual health. There is substantial evidence that testosterone therapy can have a benefit, although long-term safety results are not yet available.
Reference:
Davis S et al. Circulating Androgen Levels and Self-reported Sexual Function in Women. JAMA July 6, 2005;294;1:91-96
Further information:
Women’s health – ABC Health Library A-Z
http://abc.net.au/health/library/womenshealth.htm
Not just a headache, darling – Health Matters feature 07/08/2003
http://abc.net.au/health/features/headache/default.htm
Tags: androgen insufficiency syndrome, DHEA, low libido, research, sexual function
