Sexual impairment is often still apparent many years after a cancer patient has undergone a bone marrow transplant, otherwise known as hematopoietic cell transplantation or HCT, new research indicates.

Sexual dysfunction is a well-documented complication of cancer therapy, but few studies have examined whether this improves or worsens in cancer survivors over time.

A multicenter team led by Dr. Karen L. Syrjala of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked into this with before-and-after surveys of 161 cancer patients who underwent HCT.

Five years after the procedure, sexual function in 77 patients was compared with that seen in a comparison group of 77 healthy, matched “controls”. The researchers’ findings appear in the medical journal Blood.

Male and female patients both showed a drop in sexual activity rates and sexual function from prior to HCT to 6 months afterward.

By 1 year, men had returned to their pre-HCT sexual activity rates. For women, this took 2 years. With regard to sexual function, men had improved from their 6-month low by 2 years, whereas women still had not by 5 years.

Despite the improvement in sexual activity and function seen in patients over time, at 5 years after HCT sexual problems were still reported by 80 percent of female patients and 46 percent of males. These rates were higher than in controls, although for women the difference between patients and controls was not significant.

The author of a related editorial notes that the study may not have captured the full “complexity of human sexuality and satisfaction,” and adds that it would be interesting to see how sexual function changed over time in similar patients who did not undergo HCT.

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SOURCE: Blood, February 1, 2008.