Sex arousing and pleasurable with condoms

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Sex was rated as highly arousing and pleasurable whether or not condoms and/or lubricants were used, U.S. researchers found.

Debby Herbenick and Michael Reece of the School of Public Health-Bloomington at Indiana University reviewed a nationally representative study of U.S. men and women ages 18-59 to assess characteristics of condom and lubricant use during participants' most recent sexual event.

They used data from the 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, which involved the administration of an online questionnaire to a nationally representative probability sample of the U.S. adults.

The study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, found both men and women consistently rated sex as highly arousing and pleasurable with few differences based on condom or lubricant use.

The study also found no significant differences in regard to men's ratings of the ease of their erections based on condom and lubricant use.

"The U.S. continues to grapple with high rates of sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and unintended pregnancies," Herbenick said in a statement. "We need to understand what men and women know, or don't know, about the products they use so that we can better target public health education messages to individuals and groups."