WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration will ask a group of outside medical experts next month to evaluate a much-debated experimental drug designed to boost sexual desire in women.

The meeting is the latest twist in the FDA's multi-year review of the female libido pill flibanserin, which the agency has twice declined to approve. But the drug's backer, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, has enlisted women's groups and other advocates to lobby the agency to approve the pill, saying women's sexual problems have been long overlooked by the federal government.

The FDA said in a posting it will convene a meeting of its reproductive drugs and drug safety panels on June 4. The agency is not required to follow the advice of such panels, though it often does.