Decreased Sexual Function in Women after Concussion

Background and/or Objectives: Concussions, also called mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs), can lead to chronic sexual dysfunction. Our search found no published reviews on the association between mTBI and women’s sexual function. Our objective is to review the literature on women’s sexual function after mTBI.

Design: Narrative Review

Setting : Electronic Database

Participants : PubMed electronic database was searched on March 9, 2025. Searches were open to all languages. All resulting studies were assessed by one reviewer for research regarding sexual function in women with mTBI.

Interventions: N/A

Main Outcome Measures: Qualitative analysis of each manuscript’s methodology, sample size, severity of brain injury, and significant and non-significant findings were extracted and compared.

Results: Only two original research manuscripts analyzed women’s sexual function after mTBI. A prospective cohort study published in 2019 found that of 31 women with mTBI, 70% had increased risk of decreased sexual functioning compared to the 55 who had an extremity injury and no TBI (RR: 1.70, 95% CI 1.04, 2.76; p = .03). It also found that participants with multiple mTBIs had 2.23 times the risk of sexual dysfunction than extremity injured participants with no history of mTBI (RR 2.23, 95% CI: 1.25, 3.98; p = .007). In 2021 a secondary analysis was published from the same group. It found that of 80 women with mTBI, 1-unit increase in resilience on the Resilience Scale was associated with a 4% increase in sexual function (b = 0.04, 95% CI:0.01, 0.05; p = .008). Notably, both papers evaluated the acute period of 6-10 weeks post injury.

Conclusions: These manuscripts demonstrate that mTBI is linked to decreased sexual functioning 6-10 weeks after the injury. However, the minimal amount of published research on this subject highlights the disparity of research on women’s sexual functioning after mTBI, and the need for future studies.