Testosterone Helps Improve Sex for Some Women

Hormone treatment for postmenopausal women is now re-emerging, cautiously, because of the side effects reported with high-dose, long-term use. A study reported in New England Journal of Medicine has provided evidence that postmenopausal women with a low sexual drive can be helped by the use of a testosterone skin patch.
Over 800 women who had low sexual desire were allocated at random to apply one of three sorts of skin patches: testosterone 150 microgram, testosterone 300 microgram, or placebo. Treatment lasted one year. The women reported the weekly number of satisfying sexual episodes.

After 6 months treatment, the women using the higher testosterone dose patch reported a significant increase in the number of satisfying sexual episodes over the final 4-week period compared with baseline values; the increase averaged an additional two episodes per month. Those using the 150 microgram patch had an average of an additional 1.2 episodes per month, and placebo recipients had a smaller increase (0.7 episodes/month). Both testosterone doses levels increased sexual desire scores and reduced personal distress, compared with placebo.
Averse effects of the treatment included unwanted hair growth with the 300 microgram testosterone level; it was reported in 30% of the patients at that level compared with 23% of those on placebo.
Although the women were followed for a total of 18 months, the study wasn’t adequate to define the possible side effects of this form of hormone treatment. For instance, 4 of the testosterone-treated subjects developed breast cancer, although in one it was subsequently found to be present before the study started, and the other three all occurred in the first 4 months of the study. None of the placebo subjects developed cancer. The investigators of the study say the improvement in sexual desire was “modest but meaningful", but they think further studies are needed to clarify the safety profile of longer-term use of the patch.