Assessment of sexual dysfunction in women with Behcet’s disease

Abstract

Behcet’s disease (BD) is a progressive inflammatory disease which urogenital involvement mainly consists of genital aphthous ulcers, urethritis and recurrent cystitis. We evaluated female sexual dysfunction (FSD) in women with BD and investigate whether coexistent depression has an effect on sexual functions. A total of 25 women with BD and 25 age voluntary healthy women who served as the control group were evaluated with a detailed medical and sexual history, including female sexual function index (FSFI) ques¬tionnaire and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Serum steroid hormone levels were measured in all subjects. The group with BD had higher scores for BDI than the control patients (p<0.001) and the mean FSFI score was significantly lower than the score for the controls. FSD was diagnosed in 14 of 25 BD patients (56%), while 4 of 25 healthy women (16%). Women with BD scored worse on all domains of FSD than did the controls (p<0.001). In the correlation analysis, the FSFI score indicated a significant negative correlation with the BDI score (r=-0.901, p<0.001).The results of our study have shown that female patients with BD have distinct sexual dysfunction compared with healthy controls and coexistent depression has an additional negative effect on sexual function. J. Exp. Clin. Med., 2012; 29:28-32

Keywords

• Behcet’s disease; depression; sexual function; women

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