title: Female sexual pain disorders: dyspareunia and vaginismus.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To analyze literature on sexual pain disorders and to review and summarize the articles published throughout 2013 which contribute to the current knowledge on this subject.
  
  
  RESULTS
  By age 40, 7.8% of women reported vulvar pain. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, has combined vaginismus and dyspareunia into the same diagnostic label. The research reviewed in this article seems to differently point toward two conditions, focusing on different aspects both on the etiological and on the treatment area. Higher levels of partner-perceived self-efficacy and lower levels of partner catastrophizing were associated with less pain intensity in women with entry dyspareunia, independent of women's pain perception and self-efficacy. Alexithymia and fear were found to be important etiological factors in vaginismus.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present findings did not provide clear evidence in support of the superiority of any treatment and highlight the need for randomized, placebo-controlled trials that compare treatments in the future. A lot of work remained to be done to understand such a complex and multifaceted disturbance as genital sexual pain, but the articles examined showed that we are slowly adding more knowledge on the etiological cause and treatment models for such conditions.
authors.affiliation: aSapienza, University of Rome bUniversity of Cassino and Southern Lazio cInstitute of Clinical Sexology, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Simonelli
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eleuteri
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Petruccelli
authors.forename: Roberta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rossi
mesh_terms: D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D004414:Dyspareunia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D052065:Vaginismus / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology