How common is genital pain for women?

While pharmaceutical companies race to find a pill to boost women's sexual desire, it feels like pulling teeth to try and get scientists interested in the experience of vulvar pain, also known as vulvodynia, or otherwise unexplainable genital pain (that vagina dentata reference was purely coincidental).

Indeed little is known about the causes or treatments for chronic genital pain that can be profoundly debilitating for the women who live with it. Occasionally a "sexier" problem, like persistent genital arousal disorder will get some mainstream media attention (a mention on Gray's Anatomy here, a profile on 20/20 there) but that's all we get.

So I was encouraged to read a Reuters article about a recent study published in the February volume of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, that offers some data on how common vulvodynia may be in the U.S. population. The researchers used telephone surveys to find women who experience vulvodynia and find appropriate comparison women who do not experience genital pain. They found that about 10% of the people surveyed fit the description of experiencing vulvodynia. This percentage is lower than some earlier suggestions but the results were in line with previous research that documents the impact vulvodynia has on the lives of women who experience it.

Read more - Reuters: Genital pain takes a toll on women's lives

Related - National Vulvodynia Association