The drug Osphena (ospemifene) has just been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of moderate to severe dyspareunia, a symptom of vulvar and vaginal atrophy (VVA) that causes pain during sexual intercourse in postmenopausal women.

Dyspareunia occurs during menopause when estrogen levels drop to a level that causes vaginal atrophy, which is essentially the inflammation of the vagina due to shrinking and thinning of vaginal tissue. As a result, when women with vaginal atrophy engage in sexual intercourse it can be very painful and troublesome.

Approximately 32 million postmenopausal women in the United States suffer from VVA, with dyspareunia as one of the most commonly reported symptoms.

Opshena is very effective at alleviating the pain experienced during sex among such women, as an estrogen agonist it acts in the same way estrogen does on the vaginal tissues, making them thicker and less fragile.

Victoria Kusiak, M.D., deputy director of the Office of Drug Evaluation III in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that the pill, which is taken with food once a day, will finally provide relief for postmenopausal women who suffer from dyspareunia.

The effectiveness of the drug was assessed in a series of three different clinical studies, which included a total of 1,889 women who all experienced symptoms of vulvar and vaginal atrophy. The participants were randomly assigned to take either Osphena or placebo.