The effect of systemic lupus erythematosus on women's sexual function: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an inflammatory, autoimmune, chronic disease with multi-organ involvement with a remitting and relapsing course that mainly affects women. One of the most important challenges for women affected by SLE is the adverse impacts of the disease on Sexual function. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted with am to investigate the effects of lupus on women's sexual function. In this systematic review and meta-analysis study, both Persian and English articles were searched in databases of PubMed, Magiran, Scopus, SID, Google scholar using the keywords of "Systemic Lupus Erythematosus", "Sexual functioning", "sexual activity", "sexual disorder" and their Persian equivalents during 2000 up to December 2017. Data analysis was performed with STATA software (version 14.1). I2 test was used to assess the heterogeneitybetween studies and the random effects model was applied to pool data and perform meta-analysis. A total of 8 articles of 515 studies about the impact of lupus on women's sexual function were extracted, of which 4 studies were included in the quantitative analysis. The findings of included studies into meta-analysis showed that based on the random effects model, systemic lupus erythematosus decreased women's sexual function )RR= 1.58; 95% CI: 1.10-2.25; p=0.001). Considering the negative impact of lupus on women's sexual function, findings of this study can be a basis for designing and implementation of sexual health programs for this group of women so that lead to promotion of their sexual health