Evidence Hub

Profiles of testosterone and pre-androgens and sexual function in premenopausal women

Werner MA, Van Lissa CJ, Both S, Skiba MA, Bell RJ, Davis SR

The journal of sexual medicine, 2025

588 participants

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There is inconsistent evidence as to the role of testosterone and pre-androgens in premenopausal female sexual function, and reported associations between blood concentrations of these hormones and female sexual function vary in strength.

AIM: To examine the patterns of testosterone and pre-androgen concentrations and variations in sexual function in premenopausal eumenorrheic women.

METHODS: This was a secondary analysis of a sample of 588 premenopausal eumenorrheic women from the Grollo-Ruzzene Foundation Young Women's Health Study. Socio-demographics, health information, and questionnaire data were collected using online surveys. Eligible women were invited to provide a blood sample. We ran latent profile analysis (LPA) and subsequent analyses in R using RStudio.

OUTCOMES: Indicator variables in the LPA included sexual arousal and desire domains of the Profile of Female Sexual Function and testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and androstenedione, measured by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

RESULTS: Analyses resulted in a pattern of 3 latent classes. Classes reporting relatively lower and higher sexual arousal (LPA-derived means and 95% CIs: -0.79 [-1.24; -0.34] and 0.62 [0.51; 0.72]) did not differ significantly in sex steroid concentrations (testosterone: -0.21 [-0.38; -0.03] and -0.33 [-0.47; -0.20]; DHEA: -0.47 [-0.57; -0.37] and -0.26 [-0.39; -0.13]; androstenedione: -0.36 [-0.50; -0.22] and -0.39 [-0.49; -0.29]), while the class…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free