A DRUG that boosts female sex drive while helping women lose weight is being developed by one of Scotland’s leading experts on human reproduction.
Professor Robert Millar has been working on a hormone that can be used to treat loss of libido, a problem that affects millions of women each year.
But Millar, director of the Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the Medical Research Council, said the hormone has the added benefit of suppressing appetite.
Tests of the “wonder pill” on animals have proved successful, but Millar admits a version for humans could be as much as a decade away.
The scientist has spent 30 years researching
Type 2 gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which drives the reproductive system in animals and humans.
Millar said that when female musk shrews and marmoset monkeys were directly injected with doses of Type 2 GnRH, they displayed classic mating behaviour towards their male counterparts.
In musk shrews this was shown by “rump presentation and tail wagging”, and in monkeys it included “tongue flicking and eyebrow raising”.
However, in an unexpected short-term side-effect, the laboratory animals also ate significantly less food than usual. In some cases this was one-third less than their usual daily diet.
Millar expects that a similar rise in libido and lessening of appetite would be seen in women given the hormone. He will now work on reproducing it in the form of a pill.
Although rare in men, lack of sex drive is very common among women, with up to 40% thought to be affected at some point in their lives. Common causes are stress, relationship difficulties and having a baby.
British women spend up to 31 years of their adult lives, or six months of each year, on a diet – more time than they spend sleeping or raising children. Nearly two-thirds are unhappy with their bodies and think being thinner would make them happier.
Although a number of drug treatments are already on the market aimed at treating obesity and sexual dysfunction, Millar believes his discovery could lead to the first ‘lifestyle drug’ that works on the sex drive and the appetite.
He said: “This hormone is distributed in the brain in areas that we suspect affect reproductive behaviour. The musk shrew is a very primitive ancestor of primates and when given to the females they displayed reproductive behaviour and the males would mate with them.
“In marmoset monkeys the females given the hormone also solicited sex with tongue flicking and eyebrow raising. It also significantly inhibited appetite and food intake, which is the bonus,” he added.
“It is considered a major pharmaceutical endeavour to address the area of libido. So the next stage is to produce a drug that simulates the actions of this hormone. It is most likely that we will do it in partnership with a pharmaceutical firm. It could be available to women within the next 10 years.”
Millar suspects that a pill that simulates the hormone could also work for men, but as yet he has not carried out any tests on male animals.
The pill could become even more effective for women than the male impotence drug Viagra has for men because it works on the sex drive itself rather than just sexual function. Viagra is thought to have been taken by around 900,000 men in the UK.
Hormones are often suggested as a remedy for lack of libido in women, but so far with little real success. Doctors have been trying out the male sex hormone testosterone on women for a number of years, but it has a number of unwanted side-effects, including hairiness, spots and a deep voice.
A testosterone patch, Intrinsa, is soon to become available on the NHS for postmenopausal women with diagnosed sexual problems. The patch will release the chemical slowly to avoid the side-effects.
About 8,000 people in Scotland are taking anti-obesity drugs at an annual cost of more than £4m.
Dr Lesley Perman-Kerr, a chartered psychologist, said women would be more likely to take the pill to suppress their appetite than to increase their sex drive.
She added: “Some women have problems specific to libido, but often if they go off sex, it’s more to do with their relationship than with their level of libido. In my experience, when couples come to me and they are not having sex, the last thing they want to do is examine their relationship. They want to believe that it’s nothing to do with their relationship.
“So it may be that women would take the pill when they have a good sex life and they want to enhance it.”
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