Five Things Women Need to Know About Flibanserin

The most important thing to understand about flibanserin is that it is not a hormone. The standard treatment for female anhedonia, loss of sexual desire, involves supplementing both estrogen and testosterone or giving a medication called tibolone. It doesn't raise estrogen levels, or lower them. It won't have any bearing on unpleasant symptoms of menopause, but it won't cause cancer, either. It won't cause women to break out in acne or to sprout body hair. Unlike Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, flibanserin has no effect on blood flow to the genitals. The makers of flibanserin (Sprout Pharmaceuticals in Raleigh, North Carolina) believe that the medication works by lowering brain concentrations of serotonin, which inhibits sexual desire, while simultaneously raising levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, which increase it. What else do you need to know about it?

When the problem is blood flow, fixing blood flow takes care of the problem. The effects of Viagra (sildenafil) in men kick in just 30 to 45 minutes after taking the medication. Flibanserin isn't a medication that women can take before a date or an anniversary or a scheduled date for lovemaking and expect to feel sexy. It has to be taken for several weeks before it begins to have an effect.

As mentioned earlier, pharmaceutical treatments for loss of interest in sex in women tend to work best for women who have had little interest in sex for a very long time. In the clinical trials for this drug, most women have been in relationships for 10 years or more and had suffered low sexual desire for five years or more. They tend to respond to the drug. However, women who have short-term loss of interest in sex (after an illness, after a spouse has cheated, during short-term financial stress, when kids are running around the house, and so on) are less responsive to the drug, just as they are less responsive to treatment with estrogen and testosterone.

Sprout Pharmaceuticals report that women in their study reported, on average, having sexual intercourse 2.7 times a month before taking the drug, and 4.2 times a month after taking it. For this reason, the FDA was not especially impressed the first two times Sprout Pharmaceuticals applied for approval of the drug. However, the company has been able to make the argument that it should be up to individual women to decide how much more sex is enough. Some women are happy to have just a single additional satisfying session of lovemaking every month, and for them, the cost of the drug is worth it. 

In the clinical trials of flibanserin, 9.8 percent of women reported daytime drowsiness when taking the drug. This will probably lead to a long list of medications that should not be used with the medication, and advice not to drink when on the drug. Increasing dopamine levels can lead to increased satisfaction with other activities, such as eating, gambling, and taking risks, although these have not been reported as a problem in clinical trials.

Flibanserin will be marketed under the trade name Addyi. Final approval for release in the USA could come as soon as August 2015.