Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on female sexual health: systemic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction: On 11 March 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) announced the COVID-19 as a pandemic. The pandemic caused harmful effect in many fields of people's life. Sexual health was one of these fields. COVID-19 is not proved to be transmitted through sexual intercourse, however, it affected the reproductive and sexual health negatively through many factors that could be psychological, immunological, or even systemicObjectives: The aim of the study to assess female sexual health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This is a systemic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched by independent reviewers until December, 2024. Thirteen studies were included in our systemic review and 7 of them were included in meta-analysis. Metaanalysis was conducted using Review Manager (RevMan). Heterogeneity was assessed via the I² statistic, and a random-effects model was applied when appropriate.Results: There was a significant drop of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) score after the pandemic compared to the period before the pandemic (MD = 3.45[95% CI = 1.11, 5.79]. P =.004). Desire showed no significant difference after the pandemic compared to the period before the pandemic (P = .06) while arousal, satisfaction, lubrication, orgasm, and pain showed significant lower score after the pandemic compared to the period before.Conclusion: Our study found that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on female sexual health and sexual activity.key words: COVID-19, Pandemic, Female sexual health.