A new pill, called Lybridos, may ramp up a woman’s sexual desire while also improving sexual satisfaction. Dutch and U.S. firm Emotional Brain says the pill could be on sale within three years.
While Pfizer’s Viagra has been a global sensation, scientists have struggled to create a female version of the drug, because while Viagra has a physiological effect on men, increasing female desire requires both psychological and physical factors, reports say.
Lybridos contains testosterone to "increase sexual motivation and physiological sexual response, such as blood flow to the genitals and lubrication," the company says on its website. But unike Viagra, which focuses solely on achieving an erection, Lybridos targets areas of the brain related to sexual desire.
Of course, libido is a complex issue, and a lack of desire could be linked to anything from boredom to a drop in hormones, such as related to menopause, experts say, and a pill to fix the problem (for women at least) has sparked a host of gender politicking in the media in the past week.
Writer Daniel Bergner, who first reported on the story in The New York Times magazine last week, writes that one of the biggest sources for flagging sexual desire could be monogamy. A clinical disorder known as hypoactive sexual-desire disorder, or a "lack of lust, when it creates emotional distress," affects anywhere from 10-30 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 60, according to the article.
The Telegraph in the U.K. writes that the results of a trial with Lybridos involving more than 200 women has not yet been published, and a larger trial is planned. So far, the company says the results have been "very, very promising."