Prevalence of Sexual Dysfunction among Infertile Women in Iran: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Objective: Infertile women are at a higher risk of sexual dysfunction compared to fertile women. Infertility is a major source of stress, anxiety and depression which strongly affects sexual health. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) among Iranian infertile women. Methods: The main international (Web of Science, PubMed, Medline and Scopus) and national databases (Scientific Information Database, MagIran and Iranmedex) were searched from their inception until to April 2017. Due to heterogeneity between the studies, the extracted data were pooled using a random-effects model by running Stata software. Results: Out of 313 retrieved studies, 18 studies were included in the meta-analysis, which involved 3419 infertile women. The pooled prevalence of FSD was 64.3% (95% CI: 53.3-75.3). Our findings revealed that sexual desire (59.9%; 95%CI: 38.7-81.2) and vaginismus (19.2%; 95%CI: 11.3-27.2) were the most and the least prevalent disorders among infertile women, respectively. Conclusion: The results of our meta-analysis suggested that more than 64% of Iranian infertile women report sexual dysfunction which is meaningfully high. This study also showed that the sexual desire is significantly more common than other sexual dysfunction dimensions and the prevalence of vaginismus was least.