The HRT patch that can restore your libido after the menopause

IT is the time of life when battling hot flushes and night sweats makes many women feel less than amorous.

But hormone-replacement therapy patches can put those who have gone through the menopause in the mood for love again, experts claim.

A US study showed that HRT patches made sex less painful and more enjoyable in mid-life, working better than a daily pill.

Women whose love lives fade after the menopause, showing less interest in their partner and having fewer orgasms, as well as physical problems, are classed as having ‘low sexual function’.

But taking HRT through their skin using patches was found to improve this in the study of 670 women.

Co-author Dr Lubna Pal, from Yale School of Medicine in Connecticut, said: ‘Sexual function and satisfaction are critical to the overall quality of life, and as such any strategy that can improve satisfaction is likely to impact positively on the overall quality of an individual’s life and relationship.’ The women in the study were aged 42 to 58 and had gone through the menopause within three years. Many women see a slump in their sex drive at this time because of the loss of oestrogen in their bodies.

While some may be put off sex by the fatigue and hot flushes caused by the menopause, many more find making love just too painful because the loss of the sex hormone oestrogen reduces the amount of natural lubrication they produce.

The condition also affects regions of the brain that control mood and desire.

But the researchers found oestrogen patches helped with the pain significantly, working better than allowing nature to take its course or taking a daily HRT pill. After 18 weeks, women reported more desire, sexual satisfaction and orgasms, although this effect faded away with time, suggesting women’s libido is not linked only to pain when having sex.

HRT through the skin is thought to work better for women’s love lives because it bypasses the liver, sending the hormone straight into the circulatory system.

A pill, on the other hand, is processed through the liver, which can bind the oestrogen to testosterone in a woman’s body. A loss of free testosterone has been linked to women feeling less in the mood.

The study participants all met the score criteria for low sexual function in the early stages of menopause. This is measured using a scale from one to 36, taking into account desire, arousal, lubrication, pain reduction, orgasm and satisfaction.

However women using hormone patches saw an improvement of 7.2 per cent in their sexual function score when taken as an average over two years.

The study, in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, notes that oestrogen also removes hot flushes, which are linked to women losing their libido, as well as night sweats, palpitations, insomnia and irritability. Major studies in the early 2000s concluded HRT could raise women’s danger of some types of cancer, but more recent evidence suggests the threat has been overstated. It has been linked to hearing loss, but may protect against heart disease.