Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder - A Pill, Please
28 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 7th, 2007 // 8:56 am
Here’s a new use for antidepressants, maybe. But what is PGAD? A constant engorgement of the genitals that is unprompted by erotic thoughts or feelings, accompanied by a series of medical and psychological traits, including depression and panic attacks, at least according to one of the co-authors of a recent article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. It was first named by sex therapist Sandra Leiblum in 2001 as persistent sexual arousal syndrome, but as Leiblum and others have begun studying patients, she decided that it was more a disorder than a syndrome, writes MSNBC.
Nobody knows how many women might suffer from PGAD. And the feeling of genital arousal is not always unwelcome, MSNBC notes, adding that some women like it. But if it is not causing distress, it is not considered a disorder, and so such women cannot be said to truly have PGAD. The ones who do describe a living hell.
“One doctor looked at me and said, ‘What a lucky man your husband is! I wish my wife had this,’” Suze, 63, a retired nurse in Florida, tells MSNBC. “Others have asked, “So, is this like being a nymphomaniac?…I could be in the middle of a tennis game (or) playing canasta, and then suddenly have this intense urge for intimacy. I could masturbate five times or 105 times and it would only make it worse.”
Heather Dearmon, a 33-year-old housewife and mom in South Carolina, became so desperate she voluntarily had herself committed - twice - to psychiatric institutions. “One psychiatrist said I must be sexually repressed and needed to experiment more. He suggested I try lesbianism,” she tells MSNBC. “…It got to the point where morning, afternoon and night I had to take care of it. But the more you masturbate, the more you desensitize yourself so it would take a good hour to have three orgasms. This is at the point when I started to become suicidal. My whole life was being robbed from me.â€
She began pushing her husband away because she treasured any time she was not feeling aroused. Finally, with her fears mounting over plans for a long family car trip, a doctor prescribed Paxil. Soon after beginning dosing herself, she found the urges became less frequent. Now, she can go up to 10 days without having to masturbate, though by day seven the arousal, focused on her clitoris, is often severe.
Though some women are helped by psychiatric drugs, MSNBC writes, Leiblum strenuously resists the idea that the problem is necessarily psychological. “I do think there is always some organic contribution, but we just do not know what it is.â€
Source: MSNBC
Hat tip to KevinMD
Lisa Van S
WOW…
Could these Woman be exxagerating just a wee bit?….
“Paxil” as a treatment!! Id rather be aroused, than suffer the side effects of that nasty drug….
Dan
Another idea is to intimately study such women with this erotic hyperactivity in order to create a new medicine for those with sexual arousal disorders?
sid
WOW!!! Could these women be exaggerating a wee bit.
I am talking about those claiming that SSRI’s are the reason for global warming, Iran’s nuclear capacity, and an excuse for poor parenting.
Now these aroused women, we need a good man to get on this - That’s what she said.
John Mack
GSK, which makes and markets Paxil, is the same company that brought us Requip for RLS! Coincidence? I think not!
Right now, the Requip ad agency may be hard at work coming up with the Paxil/PGAD TV DTC ads that may take a page or two from the Requip/RLS ads.
Here’s my concept of the storyboard: http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2007/12/pgad-egad-another-syndromedisorder.html
Lisa Van S
Sid,
Global Warming, Iran’s Nuclear Capacity I blame on government.
Is there poor parenting, absolutely..
Do I claim SSRI’s increase violence/Suicide in children,…Absolutely. So does Industry see here:
http://www.effexorxr.com/pdf/wyeth_hcp.pdf
and here:
http://healthyskepticism.org/documents/documents/dearhcp.pdf
PGAD is that a good thing, could be,.. just depends on who you ask.
Lisa Van S
John Mack,
Paxil/PDAG TV DTC Ads..GSK will first have to get FDA approval, and if approved, they, then will have to add that lovely Black Box.
I met you in Washington DC in Nov 2005 during the FDA DTC Hearings. I was the one who played the video on Antidepressants in Children. I wasnt very cordial to you, thought you were the Enemy.For that I apologize..
Brian
Adding the black box to antidepressants lead to increased teenage suicides. No denying that.. Better to keep quiet and be thought the fool than to speak up and hurt somebody.. Leave diagnosis and treatment to the experts.. Your focus is on one of many variables in the broad equation of mental disorders.. No treatment is perfect and never will be..Try to help rather than to prevent generally safe treatments from the vast majority of patients who are being drowned out by your incessant chatter!!
Laurie
Brian, you need to go back and really read that CDC report on suicides. Even a quick review shows that the numbers and dates don’t support the conclusions reached.
Lisa Van S
Brian,
“Better to keep quiet and be thought the fool than to speak up and hurt somebody”
I suggest, you follow your own advice!!..
Leave diagnosis and treatment to the Experts. Hmm… tried that once, and my child almost lost her life!!!
“Incessant Chatter”, I call it discussing the truth, you should try it sometime.
Brian
Diagnosis of depression / anxiety presents a risk for suicide. Treatment has its risks too especially if the drug is not effective for the particular patient. Lack of treatment also presents a risk for injury. Read less selectively and you will find this out. On the whole, current treatments are better than they were and more people are using them than in the past. The entire landscape of psychiatric disease is changing as well as how children are raised. You can’t compare the past with present times. Scientists react to the data without your help; believe it or not. If you don’t sabotage the entire discovery process, treatments will get better. Patience is a virtue. We didn’t design the host , the disease or the society and the odds are long but as we learn more about the complicated mechanism of the illness and it’s issues we can hopefully give all patients a better quality of life. Lead , follow or get out of the way!
Lisa Van S
Brian,
Ohhh Please, Pedaling your Sales Pitch to me wont work. I suggest you save your breath
Brian
Just don’t drown out those who disagree. You are poorly informed in your area of expertise and therefore dangerous!
Lisa Van S
“You are poorly informed in your area of expertise and therefore dangerous”. HMMM,..Interesting.
Brian, do you have a last name?, how about a CV outlining your Education/Qualifications.Without this information, your just another Peanut, in the peanut gallery..
Maybe you should have taken Sid’s advice,..He’s a very wise man you know!!!…
Ellen
Hi Lisa, I have started writing to reporters and editors and alerting them that all the homocides-suicide, such as happened in Omaha, need to be checked very carefully for SSRI use and thorough toxicology reports. This danger is seldom mentioned, sometimes because the reporters don’t know, and sometimes because the whole issue is hushed up by guess who.
I don’t know who that man who who felt you were poorly informed in your area of expertise. Little does he know!
Hank
It’s cited a lot, but for those who speak of “science” as though it goes on in a vaccuum, Paul Starr is always worth requoting:
“The dream of reason did not take power into account.”
Nathan
Poor Brian —
I’ll give you the advice that Sid gave me a few weeks ago: just give up. Lisa Van S always has the last word and never budges on her poorly thought out opinions. She knows virtually nothing about the topics she speaks about and frequently is completely incorrect in her facts. I remember a few weeks ago when she tried to tell us that Chantix was an SSRI.
But there is one quality of hers that I admire: her tenacity. I can almost guarantee you that she’ll respond to this message. I’ve never seen a conversation stop with someone else disagreeing with her. Her word is always last. So we might as well just give up and get used to it. The fact that you and I both have a “PhD” following our names is likely to make her question our motives rather than believe our facts. Even though you and I make a living by studying these issues, we’re all just “peanuts in the peanut gallery” to her.
George
you are all missing the point. That lady masterbates a lot. Awesome.
Bob
Nathan-Absolutely correct. The funny thing is, now when I respond to her criticisms, my posts get deleted. Thanks Ed! I didn’t know Pharmalot had an agenda…
Ed Silverman
Hi Bob,
There’s no agenda. I would like people to stay on topic - or at least avoid comments that appear personal even as they meander in their discussions. Although I’ve been a business journalist for many years, running such a site is new to me this year - I am feeling my way through this. But I would like to keep the discourse civil. And this goes for all involved. [Added thought - just so you know, I exercised my right to remove several such posts by various people]. And meanwhile, if one person is annoying or frustrating, just ignore that person. This is an evolving medium. Let’s all try to make it work productively.
Cheers,
ed at Pharmalot
Lisa Van S
Nathan,
I have never backed down from a good fight, especially when it comes to the Safety and Efficay of the Medicines our children take.
Last word,..you got that right!!!
TOdd
Bob, don’t worry, I have been deleted as well. So it seems if anyone questions LVS, you have a good shot at being deleted.
If this somehow gets past the censors - LVS, could you please post your resume or last job application.
Just to stay on topic - I have to agree with George, these women masturbate a lot.
Please no one ever bring up the Omaha story unless you have proof Ellen. It sounds to me more like a mentally disturbed kid that wasn’t receiving treatment. If properly medicated maybe it wouldn’t have been a story.
Ellen/Lisa - which med school did you graduate from?
sid
Lisa, I read this post and had a question:
“Lisa Van S
Sid,
Global Warming, Iran’s Nuclear Capacity I blame on government.
Is there poor parenting, absolutely..
Do I claim SSRI’s increase violence/Suicide in children,…Absolutely. So does Industry see here:
http://www.effexorxr.com/pdf/wyeth_hcp.pdf
and here:
http://healthyskepticism.org/documents/documents/dearhcp.pdf”
So I clicked the first link and read the Wyeth letter from 2003 - glad there is no new information and this is your proof piece. It warns docs that the med isn’t approved in peds - also again, it is from 2003, did I mention that? You couldn’t have written a better piece, what did you want them to say? Also if they were warning about not using in peds in 2003, why do you have a problem with that? Do you hate it when drug companies do what they are supposed to do?
The next link was so old that it is no longer on the interweb. So I am guessing this was even older than 2003?
Have anything pre Y2K that I could take a look at?
Thanks and thanks for stopping by
Donna
Todd,
You have alway’s been a gentleman on this site, agreement’s and disagreement’s all put aside, let’s treat eachother with respect, and if you can’t understand why some of Bob’s reply’s were deleted, he crossed the line..big time on many occasion’s, i have no degree’s in anything, but if there was a degree on how to treat other people, then i give that one to myself……….
Ed Silverman
Hi Todd and others,
There is one moderator - and that is me. And as I’ve indicated, I would like the comments to avoid crossing the line from intense discussion to personal attacks or vitriol. This goes for everyone.
And yes, a few comments were deleted recently - comments by various people, including LVS (as you call her). You’re all free to disagree as much as you like. I don’t question that and don’t want to get in the way. But, as I’ve also indicated, I’ve decided the baiting - no matter who is doing it - isn’t desirable.
So I’ve signaled to several people to please avoid doing so. Please don’t confuse that with taking sides or censorship. I would suspect that, at the end of the day, everyone would appreciate a little more civility. I’m simply trying to make that possible.
Regards
ed at Pharmalot
Lisa Van S
Sid,
“Wyeth letter from 2003″
Its never to old,when one sees it for the first time,….True?
sid
Lisa, these go out all the time on so many different drugs. A week doesn’t go by that one doesn’t come in. I am sure I saw it, but 200 Dear Healthcare provider letters later it doesn’t really mean much. There are two types of medicine - textbook medicine where everything is readily diagnosed, treatable with medications for FDA approved conditions. Then there is real life. Patients don’t come in off the street with a sign above there head with the diagnosis - many shades of gray in diagnosis and treatment. But it is just funny when a statement comes out supporting what you want it to say that there is something wrong with that. Don’t you accuse manufacturers of promoting for kids when they shouldn’t? Did I miss something?
And just so you know, I really don’t trust the manufacturers to give me a clear view of any drug. You have to do you own due diligence.
Lisa Van S
Sid,
“You have to do your own due diligence”
I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately I had to learn this lesson the hard way. But I wont give a Doc a free ride when he fails to share this vital information
helendezel
I am a fifty year old woman with Persistant Genital Arousal Disorder. I suppose that some people would believe that with my sex drive waning due to menopause, that this disorder would be a blessing in disguise. I can assure you, it is not. It is a nightmare and since when did it become okay to make fun of people with a medical disorder (no matter how strange it may seem to you)? Having PGAD is not as simple as it sounds and not enjoyable as you would imagine in your minds. Anyone who has gone several “rounds” in bed in which their genitalia becomes extremely sensitive would have an idea as to how this feels. It is similar to that sensitivity but much, much stronger — to the point of pain. And no amount of masturbation or intercourse makes it better. In fact, quite often, it makes it worse.
I have enough of a sense of humor to poke some fun but only with my closest of friends - friends who have accompanied me to the emergency room in desperation to find relief from the pain. The comments on this board are not funny, just tasteless and minimizing to women. What next - snatching canes from blind people?
Helendezel