News Release

Many HIV-Positive Women Have Untreated Sexual Disorder

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

HIV-infected women are likely to experience decreasing sexual desire, a disorder that often goes untreated, new research suggests.

When mood disorders, sexual disorders and endocrine abnormalities of 54 HIV-positive women in New York City were evaluated, 39 percent of them (21) were diagnosed with Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). All 21 said their symptoms began only after they learned they were HIV-positive.

The study, published in the January-February issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, was conducted by Kathy Goggin, of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), with colleagues from St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center and Columbia University.

Although considerable research has been done on sexual functioning of HIV-positive men, similar studies of HIV-positive women are few. In men, the most common endocrine abnormality linked to HIV illness is hypogonadism - loss of sexual desire linked with testosterone deficiency. In this study, however, even though 48 percent of the women had lowered testosterone, researchers could not link it to diminished sexual desire.

Despite the high prevalence of HSDD, Goggin and her colleagues said their findings suggest a significant unmet need exists for treatment of the disorder among urban HIV-positive women.

"Nearly two-thirds of the sample said they would be interested in such a treatment," the researchers write. "Surprisingly, these interested women were no more likely to have a diagnosis of HSDD than those who were not interested in treatment."

The researchers said they also asked the women in their study what they believed had caused their decline in sexual desire. "The majority...indicated that they did not know," they report. "Reasons that were offered varied widely and included: fear of rejection, lack of a partner, fatigue, relationship problems, and fear of infecting sexual partners.... Whatever the cause, diagnosis and clinical attention is clearly warranted."

Of the women included in the study, more than half had known of their HIV status more than five years. Rates of depression were low among the women studied, probably because the sample excluded women who abused drugs. The researchers wished to evaluate endocrine functioning, which substance abuse is known to affect.

The study was funded by the Aaron Diamond Foundation. Goggin, former Chief Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center HIV Clinical Research Program, was an Aaron Diamond Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at New York Psychiatric Institute before going to UMKC.

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