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Review
. 2023 Jan 7;11(2):185.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare11020185.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on the Quality of Women's Sexual Life: A Systematic Review

Anastasia Voutskidou  1 , Giannoula Kirkou  1 , Maria Dagla  1 , Eirini Orovou  1 , Angeliki Sarella  1 , Ermioni Palaska  1 , Maria Iliadou  1 , Evangelia Antoniou  1
Affiliations
Review

COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on the Quality of Women's Sexual Life: A Systematic Review

Anastasia Voutskidou et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching effects, including onphysical and mental health and wellbeing. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's health, especially on women's sexual life includingdesire, arousal, orgasm and satisfaction. The initial research in PubMed/Medline, Google Scholar and Scopus yielded 573 articles from Europe (Portugal, Poland, Italy, Greece), America (U.S, Brazil) and Africa (Egypt), of which 14 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Results from the studies suggest that the pandemic negatively affected sexual functioning and satisfaction, while it increased sexual distress, sexual avoidance and solitary sexual approach behaviors. The desire to have children decreased during the pandemic, but so didthe use of contraception. There is conflicting evidence as to whether or not the pandemic has had an impact on sexual desire and frequency among women. However, some major factors associated with sexual life were psychological factors and working status. It is well documented that the pandemic has had a great psychological impact. Therefore, both of these factors are expected to significantly affect women's sexual life.

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID-19 pandemic; Coronavirus; SARS-CoV-2; female sexual behavior; female sexual function; female sexual health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart: structure search strategy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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