Reuters:

Procter & Gamble’s Intrinsa testosterone patches appear to not do much to boost a woman’s sex drive after menopause and their long-term safety is unclear, a review found.

Intrinsa is licensed for use in Europe but not in the United States where, in 2004, regulators voted against approving the patches that deliver the male hormone, citing lack of evidence for their long-term safety.

19 replies on “Back To the Drawing Board”

  2. Hey WAR ON DRUGS!!! Take a look at this.

    Post-menopausal women taking testosterone and aging baby-boomers walking around with four-hour erections.

    And chemo-patients can’t rip on a bong once in a while?

    That seem right to you?

  5. i thought it had to be applied directly to the vulva to be an effective libido-enhancer. were you supposed to slap the patch directly on your cooch?

  7. Just like teenage boys shouldn’t be taking steroids when their natural hormones are all over the place, women going through major hormone changes should be cautious about introducing exogenous testosterone into their systems. Just seems like you’re playing with very unstable fire with this.

  8. Patches are ultimately horrible ways to take hormones. Think of your skin, people! And I hear T patches are even worse than E patches in ripping your skin up. Use needles.

  10. I have the testosterone cream and it’s given a nice boost to my waning libido (I’m 40). I’ll have to look up the review. It’ll be interesting to see if they measured hormone levels – meaning, is it a drug delivery problem with the patch or what? The cream seems to work pretty well for me. I’m not horny *all* the time, but I have a nice peak around ovulation time like I used to. And I’m not growing a beard or anything.

  12. #11, Most biology and biochemistry majors (undergraduate and graduate) are women. The “women don’t do science” meme is BS and only applies to engineering, because of the weirdly misogynist culture amongst computer geeks. The glass ceiling does still apply to executives in science-based corporations, though.

  14. @12 I used to work at a big ol’ pharma company on the research side. Most of the lab techs in my department were women but the majority of the PhDs were men. These were all biology/biochem people. I think it’s changing now. Very few of the mathematician/informaticians were women, though. That department was probably 95% men and most of them were Chinese, Indian or Russian. A lot of people think of Biology as a “soft” science as opposed to Physics, for example – at least according to my husband who has a PhD in Biochemistry.

  15. So, I was watching a special on “The Pregnant Man” a few weeks ago and he was talking about how, having not had the re-assignment surgery, the testosterone he was on increased the size of his clitoris until he could have penetrative sex with his wife.

    Now, I know all about the biology of the clit and its pre-gender, could-a-been-a-penis origins and all, but my reaction then, and continues to be when I think about it, is: EWWW.

    So how much testosterone makes a woman a happier woman and how much more to make her a man?

  17. lizzie@12:

    Speaking as a male engineer who has mentored female engineering students, you are wrong to state that engineering or computer science (which has far better gender parity) are misogynistic. Do you also think that engineering is inherently racist because so few black people go into engineering? Perhaps you do. Well, you’re wrong.

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