Prior hormonal treatment, but not sexual experience, reduces the negative effects of restraint on female sexual behavior.

These experiments were designed to determine if prior sexual experience reduced the negative effect of mild stress on female sexual behavior. In the first experiment, ovariectomized rats were hormonally primed with estradiol benzoate and progesterone for 3 consecutive weeks during which they received six mating experiences in a male's home cage or received no sexual experience. The next week, females were primed with 10 μg estradiol benzoate two days before a 5 min restraint.