Improved Outcome in Fluvoxamine-Treated Patients With SSRI-Induced Sexual Dysfunction

Letter to the Editor

Sir: I read with interest the recent article by Nafziger and colleagues1 (March 1999 issue) describing the incidence of sexual dysfunction in 20 healthy volunteers who were administered fluvoxamine, 150 mg/day, for 2 to 4 weeks as part of a clinical pharmacology trial. The authors conclude that healthy normal adults (presumably free of underlying psychopathology) had a 35% rate of reporting symptoms of sexual impairment during fluvoxamine therapy as based on data from a structured adverse event questionnaire. The implication is that this result would also be true in patients who are taking fluvoxamine for obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression, and that the rate for fluvoxamine would then be comparable to the rate reported for other agents in the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class.