Hormone-based female contraception has been linked to weight gain, mood changes, headaches and blood clots in older women who smoke. Now a large study shows that researchers can add one more ailment to the list of side effects: sexual dysfunction.

Decreased libido has been anecdotally tied to Pill consumption before. Some researchers have suggested that daily contraceptive can limit a woman’s sexual thoughts or amount of lubrication. A 2006 study led by Irwin Goldstein, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, showed that the Pill raised levels of a protein called sex hormone-binding globulin, which in turn suppressed desire for months after a woman stopped taking the drug.

Now, in one of the largest studies of its kind, also published in the same journal, a survey of more than 1,000 female German medical students — all of whom were sexually active, with close to 90% using contraceptives of some kind — found that women on the Pill scored lower for sexual function, desire and arousal compared to women who used non-hormonal forms of contraception, such as condoms and intrauterine devices.

“Agents that interfere with the hormonal milieu of women may adversely affect their sexual lives,” Goldstein said in a press release. “The irony is that these women are provided a medication that enables freedom from reproductive worries, but these same women are not provided information that there are significant adverse sexual effects that may ensue.”

Stay tuned for the May issue of Nature Medicine (which is set to go live on Thursday) in which we mark the Pill’s 50th anniversary with a news feature and several commentaries.

Image by Ceridwen via Wikimedia Commons