The female sexual response is composed of physical and psychological factors, which when altered affect sexual function and can result in female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Despite advances in the literature regarding the FSD, understanding of the influence of sociodemographic and health factors, such as age, marital life, number of pregnancies, use of contraceptive methods, physical activity, urinary incontinence and menopause are still limited.

To verify the association between female sexual function and sociodemographic and health factors in Brazilian women.

This is a cross-sectional study, with Brazilian women aged ≥ 18 years, who had sexual intercourse in the last 4 weeks, literate and with internet access, recruited from the dissemination of the research on social networks. Data were collected via Google Forms carried out between October 2021 and August 2022, and contained sociodemographic, health and screening questions. of DSF through the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire, which has six domains (desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain). Each domain has its own score, and when added together, they determine the final score, where values ≤ 26.55 represent worse sexual function and risk of having some type of FSD. To measure associations, binomial logistic regression analysis was performed by FSFI domains. DSF screening was the dependent variable, while age, marital status, number of pregnancies, use of contraceptive methods, practice of physical activity (PA), urinary incontinence (UI) and post-menopause were the independent variables. The SPSS program (version 22.0) was used, adopting a significance level of 5%.

A total of 621 women participated, of which 197 (30.5 years ± 9.3) were at risk for DSF based on the FSFI. As for the associations, the desire domain was associated with the variables UI and menopause (OR=1.61, CI 1.09–2.38, p=0.02); difficulty in the excitation and lubrication domains were inversely associated with the practice of PA (OR=0.53, CI 0.35–0.80, p<0.1; OR=0.62 CI 0.41–0.95, p=0.03, respectively); difficulty in the satisfaction domain was directly associated with UI (OR=2.08, CI 1.30–3.32, p<0.01) and difficulty in the pain domain was inversely associated with the practice of PA (OR=0, 59, CI 0.38–0.91, p=0.02) and directly associated with the presence of UI (OR=2.16, CI 1.32–3.53, p=0.01); difficulty in the orgasm domain was not associated with any of the variables.

The findings of this study indicate that women who do not practice PA had greater impairment in the domains of arousal and lubrication. For the domains of desire, satisfaction and pain, UI was the main factor associated with FSD.

By presenting the factors that are significantly associated with FSD, it is possible that in clinical practice and research these data are objects of investigation by health professionals aiming at the prevention of FSD.