Sexual health in neuromuscular diseases: Neglected challenges revealed by a scoping review - PubMed
5 hours ago
- #sexual dysfunction
- #neuromuscular diseases
- #quality of life
- Neuromuscular diseases (NMDs) cause progressive motor decline and reduced quality of life, with sexual health often overlooked.
- A scoping review analyzed sexual dysfunction (SD) in adults with NMDs, focusing on prevalence, mechanisms, and research gaps.
- 27 studies (1983-2024) involving 2428 individuals were included, mostly cross-sectional and questionnaire-based.
- SD prevalence varied across NMDs: myotonic dystrophy linked to hypogonadism, Charcot-Marie-Tooth correlated with disease severity in women, amyloid neuropathies showed autonomic-related dysfunction.
- Inflammatory myopathies had high SD prevalence in both sexes, ALS involved intimacy loss due to disability, myasthenia gravis linked SD to mental health.
- SD in NMDs is common, multifactorial, and under-recognized, with gaps in female sexual health, physiological assessments, and longitudinal data.
- The review calls for integrating sexual health assessments into routine NMD care.