Drug companies exaggerate low libido in women

Drug companies have been accused of creating and promoting female sexual dysfunction as a bona fide medical condition so that they can profit from new drugs to treat it.

"It has become clear that drug companies have not simply sponsored the science of this new condition; on occasions they have helped to construct it," said Ray Moynihan, lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in today's British Medical Journal (BMJ).

He accused the pharmaceutical industry of paying key opinion leaders to help create the condition known as "female sexual dysfunction", or "hypoactive sexual desire disorder", and said they have funded surveys which portray women's sexual problems as widespread.

Meanwhile, independent scientific studies conducted without industry funding questioned whether the "disorder" was, indeed, widespread.

He pointed out that industry takes a leading role in “educating” both professionals and the public about sexual dysfunction.

For example, he said a Pfizer funded course for US doctors claimed that up to 63 per cent of women had sexual dysfunction and that testosterone and sildenafil (Viagra) may be helpful, along with behavioural therapy.

Although studies have shown the drugs to be ineffective in treating the condition, Moynihan warned that the "drug industry shows no signs of abandonning plans to meet the unmet need it helped to manufacture."

“Perhaps it is time to develop new panels to take responsibility for defining treatable illness, made up of people without financial ties to those with vested interests in the outcomes of their deliberations and much more broadly representative of the wider public … and start the slow process of untangling the marketing from the medical science,” he concluded.

However, in an accompanying editorial in the BMJ, Dr Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, a specialist in psychosexual medicine said: "His argument that female sexual dysfunction is an illness constructed by pathologising doctors under the influence of drug companies will fail to convince clinicians who see women with sexual dysfunction, or their patients.

"Faced with a woman in tears whose libido has disappeared and who is terrified of losing her partner, doctors can feel immense pressure to provide an immediate, effective solution."

Dr Goldbeck-Wood said more studies are needed that reflect the complexity of sexual life.

This article was published on Fri 1 October 2010