COVID-19 pandemic and its implications on sexual life: Recommendations from the Italian Society of Andrology

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the coronavirus that causes an infectious disease, called COVID-19, first detected in patients with pneumonia in Wuhan (People's Republic of China) on December 2019. Italy was the first European country to state the outbreak of the infection and its Council of Ministers declared the state of health emergency on 31.01.2020, then the World Health Organization ruled a global pandemic on 11.03.2020. The nasopharyngeal swab is based on the detection of virus RNA and is the only reliable one for declaring COVID-19 infection. The most common symptoms observed in COVID-19 patients before hospitalization may be fever, chills, cough, dyspnea, asthenia, myalgia and/or arthralgia. This symptomatology can be often complicated in a dramatically increasing manner such as to require hospitalization starting from the third-fourth week. COVID-19 outbreak has dramatically affected the quality of life by changing inter-personal relationships, community life and obviously sexual health. The purpose of this work, based on available evidence, is to provide recommendations to help the population to face their sexual life in this critical period.

COVID-19 and Male Sexual Functioning: A report of 3 Recovered Cases and Literature Review

“…In this context, we can not exclude or deny the possible effect of lockdown and social restrictions imposed by the national authority during the pandemic, which may lead to panic and risky feelings to catch the infection, and its negative impact on the sexual activity. 25 Concerning the high scores of desire domain, this is going parallel with that suggested by other researchers that the increased sexual desire is a suitable means to keep bond and alleviate mental stress during the pandemic restriction. 26 It is interesting to note that the reduction in the income of the third patient did not shift the different scores, before catching the infection, away from those of the other patients whose income did not change.…”

“…No validated Arabic version is currently available for the IIEF-15, but the Arabicspeaking patients could easily understand that questionnaire. 14 According to the scores of erectile function domain (full score = 30), erectile dysfunction (ED) may be severe ED (1-10), moderate ED (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16), mild to moderate ED (17)(18)(19)(20)(21), mild ED (22)(23)(24)(25), and no ED (26)(27)(28)(29)(30). Full scores of the other domains are 10, 10, 15, and 10, respectively.…”

Changes in Sex Life among People in Taiwan during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Risk Perception, General Anxiety, and Demographic Characteristics

“…First, the present study did not ask participants about their current sexual relationship status or relationship quality, which are major factors affecting people's sexual satisfaction during a pandemic like Covid-19 where people's social lives may have been curtailed. Sex between intimate couples can be an activity to support psychologically fragile people living in restricted areas for longer quarantine periods [54]. Second, although recruiting respondents through Facebook is a promising research method for targeting the general public during fast-moving infectious disease outbreaks [55], Facebook users may not be representative of the population.…”

COVID-19 and male fertility: Taking stock of one year after the outbreak began

“…To date, no cases of virus transmission from sperm have been recorded. However active patients and patients recovered from COVID-19 are advised against donating sperm and performing assisted fertilization (37).…”