ArticleSexual medicine2021
Temporal Relationships Between Pain During Intercourse (PDI), Loneliness, and Depressive Symptoms Among Women.
Article in Sexual medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Associations between urinary biomarkers of phthalates and phthalate alternatives and female sexual function in a North American cohort.The journal of sexual medicine · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPainful sex can lead to increased psychological distress, including major depressive disorder, and the experience of loneliness may explain this association.
aimsWe aimed to investigate loneliness as a mediator between painful sex and depressive symptoms and hypothesized that women who experienced greater pain during intercourse (ie, more severe and more frequent pain) would endorse higher rates of loneliness and, in turn, higher rates of depressive symptoms at a 6-month follow-up.
methodsParticipants were 148 adults who were assigned female at birth (78.4% white, 77% partnered, 31.14 ± 10.9 years old) and completed an online, anonymous survey including the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), UCLA Loneliness Scale-3 (ULS), and demographic information.
main outcome measureDepressive symptoms, measured via the Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ8) at baseline (T1) and 6-month follow-up (T2) were used as the outcomes of the present study.
resultsPainful sex and ULS at T1 were significantly correlated with each other and with PHQ8 at T1 (r = 0.590). However, change in PHQ8 from T1 to T2 was not significantly correlated with ULS (r = 0.024) or any other key study variables, indicating that that ULS was not a significant mediator of the relationship between painful sex at T1 and change in PHQ8 (standardized indirect effect = 0.011; 99% CI = -0.114 to 0.188).
conclusionThese findings are consistent with previous studies highlighting that painful sex is related to depressive symptoms through loneliness cross-sectionally, suggesting that future treatments for depressive symptoms among women who experience painful sex might target loneliness. Stout ME, Hawkins MAW. Temporal Relationships Between Pain During Intercourse (PDI), Loneliness, and Depressive Symptoms Among Women. Sex Med 2021;9:100444.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.