"Female Viagra" boosts low libido

A drug designed to act as an anti-depressant has been shown to boost sexual desire in women with low libidos, new research has found.

Past studies found the drug Flibanserin to be a poor anti-depressant, but the new results show it to be effective in treating women with low libido.

"Flibanserin was a poor antidepressant," said John Thorp, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who led the study.

"However, astute observers noted that it increased libido in laboratory animals and human subjects.

"So we conducted multiple clinical trials and the women in our studies who took it for hypoactive sexual desire disorder reported significant improvements in sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences," Dr Thorp added.

Dr Thorp and his team combined the results from four clinical trials of Flibanserin carried out in the US, Canada and Europe.

A total of 1,946 pre-menopausal women aged 18 and older were given either Flibanserin or a placebo for 6 months.

The results showed that women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (low libido) who took 100mg of Flibanserin a day reported a greater number of satisfactory sexual encounters, increased sexual desire and reduced stress linked to sexual problems, compared with those who took the placebo.

"It's essentially a Viagra-like drug for women in that diminished desire or libido is the most common feminine sexual problem, like erectile dysfunction is in men," Dr Thorp said.

The results were presented today at the Congress of the European Society for Sexual Medicine in Lyon, France.

"These results point to a novel approach to pharmacologic treatment of the sexual problem that plagues reproductive age women the most, and may over time prove to be an effective treatment without the side effects of androgen replacement therapy, which is the only treatment currently available," Dr Thorp said of the results.

Flibanserin is currently an investigational drug and is available only to women taking part in clinical trials.

This article was published on Mon 16 November 2009