Female partners of men who took dapoxetine report greater satisfaction.
MILAN—Female partners of men with premature ejaculation (PE) seem to benefit when the condition is treated with dapoxetine (DPX), according to findings presented here at the European Association of Urology 23rd Congress.
Dapoxetine is a short-acting selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that is being developed for the as-needed treatment of PE.
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The new data, reported by a French group, showed that the treatment benefit with dapoxetine includes a significant improvement in the sexual and psychological experience of the female partner.
Jacques Buvat, MD, Director of CETPARP/Le Grand Hunier in Lille, France, and associates eval-uated improvements in sexual functioning reported by female partners of men with PE who had been randomized to six months’ treatment with placebo, dapoxetine 30 mg, or dapoxetine 60 mg following a four-week baseline period.
“Research has shown that female partners of men with PE are generally as negatively impacted as men, and scores on the Premature Ejaculation Profile (PEP) for men and their female partners are similar in magnitude and significantly correlated,” Dr. Buvat observed.
Few studies, he added, have evaluated improvements in the sexual functioning of female partners of men with PE following treatment.
The 1,162 men enrolled in the 22-center, phase III trial had been diagnosed with PE according to the DSM-IV-TR criteria, including self-reported personal distress or interpersonal difficulty related to ejaculation for the men. Another inclusion criterion—one that is not part of DSM-IV criteria was intravaginal ejaculatory latency time (IELT) two minutes or less in 75% or more of intercourse episodes.
Female partners completed the female version of the Premature Ejaculation Profile (PEP) individually at baseline, at week 12, and at week 24. The questionnaire includes measures of their perception of the man’s control over ejaculation, their own satisfaction with sexual intercourse, and their own personal distress and interpersonal difficulty related to ejaculation. According to the study protocol, dapoxetine was to be taken as needed one to three hours before sexual intercourse.
At the start of the trial, fewer than 5% of female partners across groups reported that the man’s control over ejaculation was “good” or “very good,” which increased to 25% and 32.3% when male partners received dapoxetine 30 and 60 mg, respectively, versus 14.4% with placebo.
In addition, 16% of female partners across treatment groups reported “good” or “very good” satisfaction with sexual intercourse at baseline, which increased to 33.8% and 39.1% among female partners of men receiving DPX 30 and 60 mg, respectively, at the end of the trial compared with 19.4% with placebo.
