Dyspareunia in Puerto Rican middle-aged women

Abstract

Objective: Dyspareunia is a common sexual dysfunction. There is a lack of studies that address female sexual dysfunction in Puerto Rico. The present cross-sectional study characterized dyspareunia in a sample of Puerto Rican women aged 40 to 59 years and evaluated the relationship between reported dyspareunia with demographic, lifestyle, and health factors.

Methods: Nine hundred twenty Puerto Rican women participated in health fairs conducted in 22 municipalities between May 2000 and November 2001 where they filled out a questionnaire. Contingency table and chi statistics were used to evaluate the bivariate associations of dyspareunia with demographic, lifestyle, and health factors. Crude and multivariate logistic regression models were used to estimate the magnitude of the association between dyspareunia and demographic, lifestyle, and health factors.

Results: The overall prevalence of dyspareunia in this population was 18%. Dyspareunia was somewhat lower among women aged 40 to 49 years (17%) than among those aged 50 to 59 years (21%), not reaching statistical significance. Dyspareunia was associated with educational attainment, employment status, menopause status, current hormone therapy use, genitourinary symptoms, and loss of libido (P < 0.05). Current cigarette smoking, body mass index, physical activity, alcohol use, parity, and ever use of oral contraceptives were not associated with dyspareunia in bivariate analysis (P > 0.05). In the multivariate analysis, incontinence (prevalence odds ratio [POR], 1.67; 95% CI, 1.02-2.73), vaginal dryness (POR, 3.97; 95% CI, 2.49-6.31), vaginal itching (POR, 2.44; 95% CI, 1.55-3.83), loss of libido (POR, 3.08; 95% CI, 1.92-4.94), and partnership (POR, 2.22; 95% CI, 1.29-3.82) remained associated with dyspareunia.

Conclusions: Our results agree with previous studies regarding the potential association between health and lifestyle factors and dyspareunia. Additional studies of female sexual dysfunction in Puerto Rican women are highly warranted.