Women's orgasm woes inherited?

LONDON — A woman's ability to have an orgasm is at least partly determined by her genes and can't be blamed entirely on cultural influences, new research suggests.

Experts say that's likely to be interpreted as both good news and bad news.

"It'll be upsetting because some women will think, 'Oh my God, maybe I just can't.' On the other hand, it takes away a kind of guilt or pressure," said Dr. Virginia Sadock, director of the human sexuality program at New York University Medical Center.

Either way, specialists say the findings don't mean that women who inherit an unfortunate gene package are doomed. They just mean that more work, or patience, is required.

The main benefit of discovering the genetic elements of sexual function, experts say, is to help scientists find better treatments for sexual problems. The study was reported this week in Biology Letters, a journal of the Royal Society, Britain's independent academy of science.

In the study, scientists from St. Thomas' Hospital in London sent questionnaires to 4,037 women who are part of the British twin registry. About half of them were identical twins and half were fraternal twins.

One in three of the women reported never or hardly ever reaching orgasm during intercourse and 21 percent said they hardly, if ever, achieve climax during masturbation. Those figures are consistent with other surveys conducted over the past few decades.

However, the questionnaires revealed a significant genetic influence on the ability to reach orgasm, said lead researcher Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist at St. Thomas' Hospital.

The similarity in orgasm experience was greater in identical twins than it was in fraternal twins, Spector said. Because the only difference between the two groups was genetic, the researchers concluded that the gap between the groups was the genetic component.

After taking into account other factors that could influence orgasm, the scientists estimated that 34 percent of the difficulty women face in reaching orgasm during intercourse is due to genes.

The authors said they did not know what the underlying genes were nor what their functions might be. "It's likely that many different genes are involved," Spector said. "We're not looking for just one gene but tens or maybe hundreds of genes."

Barry Komisaruk, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said it was plausible that genes would influence a woman's experience with orgasms. They might, for example, affect nerve pathways, hormone levels or the release of neurochemicals.

Even if women do inherit an unfavorable genetic mix, experts said, many approaches can help most women enhance their ability to achieve orgasm.

"Factors ... vary from woman to woman. What we do know is that psychologically women are more complex sexually," Sadock said. "For women, being in a relationship where they feel loved and feel secure is a big factor. Other big factors are how they feel about themselves and about sex and what their first experiences were."