Sexual violence history predicts changes in vaginal immune parameters during sexual arousal.

Objective: To examine the influence of sexual arousal on vaginal mucosal inflammatory cytokine and antibody production in healthy women with and without histories of childhood and/or adult sexual violence.

Methods: Ninety-one premenopausal healthy women (ages 18-42) attended a single laboratory session in which they provided vaginal fluid samples before and after viewing one neutral and one erotic film. While viewing the films, participants' vaginal sexual arousal was recorded using vaginal photoplethysmography.

Inflammation Predicts Sexual Arousability in Healthy Women.

Background: Though many women report sexual arousal difficulties, the mechanisms driving these difficulties are unclear. Sexual response relies on a host of psychophysiological processes that have bidirectional relationships with inflammation. Additionally, chronic inflammation may impair genital blood flow, which in turn may impact sexual arousal.

Lack of Evidence for a Relationship Between Salivary CRP and Women's Sexual Desire: An Investigation Across Clinical and Healthy Samples.

Background: Inflammation has been linked to a variety of mental and physical health outcomes that disproportionately impact women, and which can impair sexual function; thus, there is reason to expect a link between inflammation and women's sexual functioning.

Aim: To test the hypothesis that higher concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP), a general biomarker of inflammation, would predict women's lower sexual desire.

Method: As 2 independent research teams, we conducted 3 separate studies (total n = 405) that assessed salivary CRP and various measurements of sexual desire in different women populations.

The Impact of Sexual Arousal and Emotion Regulation on Men's Sexual Aggression Proclivity.

Extant literature supports a relationship between sexual arousal and increased likelihood of sexually coercive behavior in men. The present study investigated the impact of sexual arousal on sexual coercion proclivity and the degree to which emotion regulation moderated this relationship in the context of two separate affect inductions. We predicted that sexual arousal would more strongly predict sexual coercion likelihood for men scoring lower on emotion regulation ability compared with men with above average emotion regulation abilities.

Affect and Sexual Responsivity in Men With and Without a History of Sexual Aggression.

Despite increased attention to understanding risk factors for sexual aggression, knowledge regarding the emotional and sexual arousal patterns of sexually aggressive men remains limited. The current study examined whether sexually aggressive men exhibit unique profiles of affective responsivity, in particular to negatively valenced stimuli, as well as sexual arousal patterns that differentiate them from nonaggressive men. We presented 78 young men (38 sexually aggressive; 40 nonaggressive) with a series of videos designed to induce positive, sad, or anxious affect.