Sexual dysfunction not uncommon in pregnant women

Symptoms of sexual dysfunction (SD) normally occur during pregnancy, according to a study, noting the need for further research, particularly on validated tools that assess pregnancy-specific SD symptoms.

A team of investigators conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the prevalence of SD among pregnant women and the factors associated with their SD scores. Studies that focused on SD in pregnant women were obtained from the databases of PubMed, EBSCOhost, Web of Science, Turkish Medline, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Ovid.

The following combination of keywords were used during the search: “pregnant” or “pregnancy” and “sexual dysfunction.”

A total of 5,644 studies had been initially identified, of which 693 were included in the eligibility assessment and 668 were removed following the exclusion criteria. The remaining 25 studies, which included 6,871 pregnant women, were deemed eligible for the meta-analysis.

The pooled SD prevalence was 69.7 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 59.9‒77.9) in pregnant women. Additionally, about 70 percent of these individuals had a higher risk for SD. SD score was associated negatively with the age of the pregnant women, the spouse’s age, and the duration of marriage, and positively with the education level.

“The results of this study can be used in the organization of prenatal care, especially for pregnant women at high risk for SD,” the investigators said.

“The most important limitation of this study is that it analyses documents showing pregnant women at risk for SD according to an unconfirmed measurement tool for pregnant women,” they added.