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Researchers found that nearly 90 percent of women over 70 in the study had low sexual desire and a much smaller proportion were distressed about it. The combination of low desire and related distress is known as hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction (HSDD) and nearly 14 percent of women had it. Older people are increasingly remaining sexually active and sexual wellbeing is important to them, said senior author Susan R. Davis of Monash University in Melbourne.“This is probably because people for this age are healthier now than people of this age in past decades,” Davis told Reuters Health by email.
A random national sample of women ages 65 to 79 was contacted by phone and invited to take part in a women’s health study. Those who agreed received questionnaires asking about demographic data, partner status and health history, including menopausal symptoms, vaginal dryness, pelvic floor dysfunction, depression symptoms, sexual activity and sexual distress. Of the 1,548 women who completed and returned the questionnaires, about half were married or partnered, 43 percent had pelvic surgery and 26 percent had cancer of some kind. About a third had menopausal symptoms and one in five had vaginal dryness during intercourse.
In the entire sample, 88 percent reported having low sexual desire, 15.5 percent had sex-related personal distress, and women with both, who qualified for HSDD, made up 13.6 percent of the group, as reported in Menopause. That’s lower than has been reported for this age group in the past, and similar to how many women report HSDD at midlife, Davis noted. “Considering how conservative women of this age are, we were surprised that over 85 percent of the women completed all the questions on desire and sexual distress so we could actually assess this on most of the study participants,” Davis said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2f4uAXW Menopause, online November 7, 2016.