It's kept under wraps: breathlessness reduces sexual satisfaction

Flinders University

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Professor David Currow, Strategic Professor at the Flinders Ageing Alliance, Flinders University. 

view more 

Credit: Flinders University

Chronic breathlessness affects every part of a person’s life – including their sex life, with people experiencing  breathlessness saying they have greatly reduced satisfaction with their overall sexual life.

Flinders University researchers have found from a national survey that the often-underplayed condition of chronic breathlessness can not only affect people’s physical condition but also limit their enjoyment of such intimacies as sex.

Lead author, Professor David Currow, Strategic Professor at the Flinders Ageing Alliance, says up to one in 100 Australians is housebound or struggles with tasks such as dressing or undressing because of chronic breathlessness.

This chronic symptom is experienced by 4% - 10% of the general population in high-income countries, with higher rates in low-resource countries and 25% of the middle-aged population, and rising proportions in older populations, yet its significance is not widely discussed.

“This is a significant problem because chronic breathlessness is largely invisible, even to close family members,” says Professor Currow.

“People give up doing many everyday things to avoid breathlessness and their worlds shrink.”

The researchers, including international experts in Sweden and the US, and the University of Technology Sydney in Australia, evaluated associations between breathlessness and individuals’ perceived satisfaction with sexual lives and explored mediating factors in this relationship.

A cross-sectional, online, population-based survey of more than 10,000 Australian adults, of which 52% were women (average age 45), had 42% report they were very dissatisfied with their overall sexual life. Nine percent of all people reported that breathlessness had impacted their overall sexual life.

People with chronic breathlessness were one and one-half times more likely to report that they were not satisfied with their sexual lives – having controlled for age, sex and body mass index.

“Increasing breathlessness severity is associated with the likelihood of a person’s overall sexual life being impacted negatively,” says Professor Currow. “The high prevalence rates of dissatisfaction with overall sexual life and perceived impacts for people with chronic breathlessness align with high rates of sexual dissatisfaction and impacts on sexual health reported by people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and poorer physical fitness.”

Early identification of sexual health concerns and associated psychological distress can guide timely interventions, including counselling, pulmonary rehabilitation and practical strategies for intimacy.

“The interplay between a person’s perceived satisfaction with their sexual life and a range of social and health factors is complicated,” explains Professor Currow.

“A wide variety of factors may underpin satisfaction with a person’s sexual life – such as hormonal, physical, physiological and psycho-social influences – any of which may be compromised in people with chronic breathlessness.”

The study also indicates an indirect relationship between breathlessness and perceptions related to overall sexual life potentially mediated by emotional functioning, something not found for physical nor social functioning.

The research – ‘Associations between breathlessness and individuals’ satisfaction with sexual life: a nationally representative internet survey’, by Max Olsson, Jacob Sandberg, Slavica Kochovska, Sungwon Chang, Diana Ferreira, Steven Pantilat, Magnus Ekström and David Currow – has been published in BMJ Open Respiratory Research. DOI: 10.1136/bmjresp-2025-003907.

 

---

Journal

BMJ Open Respiratory Research

DOI

10.1136/bmjresp-2025-003907 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Associations between breathlessness and individuals’ satisfaction with sexual life: a nationally representative internet survey

 

Counting the silence: How years of data crunching led to female artists making up majority of Brit Award nominees

Linda Coogan Byrne on gender-based exclusion in the UK and Irish music industries

Frontiers

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Linda Coogan Byrne

view more 

Credit: Maria Del Carmen.

by Linda Coogan Byrne

Radio in the background of a room can feel almost invisible. It hums in kitchens, cars, and shops. Radio sits somewhere between news and everyday life. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, it still reaches close to nine in ten adults every week. During the first Covid lockdown, listening numbers rose even further. We know that in moments of uncertainty, people turn to familiar voices.

But familiarity is not neutral. It is, and always has been, curated.

Official Irish Singles Chart data revealed a vast gap. An entire stretch from 2010 to 2020 showed that these charts had never placed a solo Irish woman at number one. At a time when women across the country were putting out records, touring abroad, and building their audiences, this was wild to me.

Upon introspection, that absence was not random. It reflected what was happening on national radio playlists.

My curiosity was no longer a thing I could abate. In 2020, during lockdown, I began analyzing broadcast airplay data across Ireland and the UK. I launched Why Not Her?, an independent audit examining gender representation across radio and festival programming. The question was simple: who is actually being played during peak listening hours, when audiences and advertising revenues are at their highest, and why?

Skipping female artists

The first findings were shocking to me but validating to women in music. Across mainstream Irish radio, domestic female artists accounted for just 7.7%of airplay. On some stations, Irish women did not appear in heavy rotation for extended periods, sometimes for five years at a time. Heavy rotation refers to the highest tier of a station’s playlist where tracks are scheduled multiple times a day. It’s a programming decision that plays a significant role in shaping which artists receive widespread exposure and ultimately commercial traction.

Heavy rotation is not simply a marker of popularity. It is a commercial mechanism. These are the songs repeated when audiences are largest and cultural familiarity is built. They shape public recognition and influence which artists are perceived as successful.

The broader ecosystem of the music industry follows a predictable pattern. Airplay drives streaming. Streaming influences charts. Charts shape festival booking, label investment, export funding, and media coverage. Exposure compounds. So does exclusion. The decade-long chart drought for Irish women was not a mystery. It was the outcome of this system.

When I presented this data to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, I was told meaningful change would take at least five years. I was warned that shifting playlists too quickly might upset male presenters who ‘had mouths to feed’. A senior programmer suggested that women and artists of color could be introduced gradually during overnight slots, when fewer people were listening. Inclusion, apparently, was safest in the dark.

This is how gatekeeping typically operates in cultural industries: rarely through explicit bans, but often through habit, risk aversion, and assumptions about audience preference. Yet audience preference is shaped by repetition. If women are not played, they do not become familiar. If they are not familiar, they are considered commercially risky. The cycle reinforces itself.

Data interrupts that cycle. Why Not Her? was built on spreadsheets and publicly available industry data using Radiomonitor, a system that tracks the worldwide airplay of songs and is relied upon by record labels and broadcasters. I did not invent new metrics. I simply counted what was already happening and published the results.

The data did not stay quiet. The reports prompted national and international media coverage, parliamentary discussion, and internal industry reviews. We expanded the analysis to the UK, where the response was notably different. Monitoring and accountability entered the conversation, and unlike in Ireland, accountability came to the forefront. When we published the UK data, they reacted, improved, and did better. This is what happens when bias is put to question and those in power answer with the will to do better. It is that simple. Not rocket science. 

By 2024, women had overtaken men – for the first time since our analysis began – in our UK Top 100 radio airplay chart report. This shift was not symbolic. It was reflected in the 2026 Brit Award nominations, 70% of which went to women artists. There is that ecosystem in full correlated proof. A year earlier, several female artists were cited in UK industry reports to significantly have contributed to reaching a historic £1.57 billion in revenue.

Making equality matter

The lesson is clear. Change does not occur because attitudes soften. It occurs when disparities are measured, published, and repeated back to institutions until they either act or defend the imbalance.

The implications extend beyond radio. Streaming platforms are often described as neutral systems where music succeeds based on listener choice. In reality, however, recommendation algorithms learn from historical listening patterns. When past exposure disproportionately favors male artists, those patterns are reproduced through automated recommendation systems. Without deliberate intervention, inequality becomes embedded in code.

Data alone does not resolve inequality. What it does is remove plausible deniability.

So what happens next?

Behind every percentage point in these datasets is an artist trying to build a career. Behind every absence is a voice that could have shaped cultural memory but was never given the same exposure.

If cultural institutions are serious about equality, representation must be treated as a measurable performance indicator. Broadcasters and festivals should publish annual gender data on programming, bookings, and leadership. Public funding should be linked to demonstrable progress. And the decision-making structures that shape playlists and line-ups must become more representative themselves.

Radio still matters because it shapes familiarity. Familiarity shapes careers. And careers shape cultural history.

Why Not Her? began as a question. After six years of evidence, it has become a diagnosis. Once silence is quantified, it stops appearing accidental. It becomes a choice. The question for the music industry is no longer whether the imbalance exists. It is what it chooses to do next.

---

Journal

Frontiers in Communication

DOI

10.3389/fcomm.2026.1765784 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Why Not Her? Gender, Power, and Gatekeeping in Irish and UK Radio and Festival Programming

Article Publication Date

7-Apr-2026

 

GMO pictures may reinforce existing views, deepening the divide

A new paper in JCOM shows that images of GMOs tend to reinforce pre-existing attitudes, amplifying polarization rather than changing minds

Sissa Medialab

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

An example of "coactive" image used in the experiements

view more 

Credit: Bailey et al, JCOM, 2026

Images have long played a powerful role in shaping public perceptions of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), often reinforcing emotional reactions more than scientific understanding. A new experimental study published in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM) explores how different types of images can influence people’s attitudes toward GMOs — and suggests that pictures may reinforce existing views, further polarizing them.

Powerful tools

Images are powerful tools, especially when it comes to food: they can push consumers toward one choice and steer them away from another. 
Already at the beginning of this millennium, the “war” against GMOs relied heavily on images to convey negative messages — and scientifically misleading information, if not outright falsehoods — about foods produced using this technology. You may be familiar with the term “frankenfood”, popularised in a number of communication campaigns that paired images of food with those of the famous “creature” invented by Mary Shelley. Greenpeace’s campaigns are among the most famous examples, but they are far from unique: many other actors have used — and continue to use — this type of communication strategy.

Rachel Bailey is a researcher at the School of Communication at Florida State University who studies how images in the media can automatically influence people’s choices and opinions, drawing on approaches from evolutionary psychology. “I study how the media can naturally encourage people to do different sorts of things in automatic ways based on our own biological imperatives. And images tend to be quite helpful in that,” Bailey explains. 

Bailey and colleagues (Jay Hmielowski, Myiah Hutchens, Pooja Ichplani, Jessica Sparks and Sun Young Park) have just published an experimental study in JCOM investigating how images may influence public attitudes toward GMOs. 

Through the platform YouGov, the team recruited nearly a thousand participants, forming a sample representative of the U.S. population. Participants in the experiment read a short neutral description of GMOs accompanied by one of three possible conditions: no image, an image of an apple, or an image of an apple being injected with a substance using a syringe — intended to evoke the idea of “unnaturalness”.

Before the experiment, participants were classified according to their initial attitude toward GMOs (positive, negative, or uncertain). After viewing the text and images, they were asked to answer a series of questions measuring their attitudes toward GMOs, their willingness to try them, and the positive and negative components of their evaluation — from which the researchers calculated their level of “ambivalence” toward GMOs.

Deepening the divide
Contrary to what one might expect, in Bailey’s experiment the “positive” image — the apple alone — had a small effect on avoidance intentions among those who already supported GMOs.

The stimuli defined by the researchers as coactive (the apple with the hypodermic syringe, combining both a positive element — the apple — and a negative one — the syringe suggesting artificiality) produced an interesting result: “Compared to the no-image condition, the coactive image made people who were already supportive toward GMOs even less negative,” Bailey explains.

What emerges is a kind of opinion-extremizing effect: the images tended to reinforce attitudes that were already present. “The positive cue can make positive people more positive, but in exploratory analyses, the coactive cue did make the skeptics and the uncertain folks even less positive  towards GMOs,” Bailey comments.

Bailey’s study confirms that images can have important effects on people’s opinions — particularly when food is involved — but in ways that are not always easy to predict, highlighting the importance of careful research. “I think images are still one of the best ways that we can change people’s opinions or at least lead them to be more open to a change of opinion in a persuasive context,” she says. “In this case, people have very strong attitudes. Those who had really strong attitudes towards GMOs were pretty stuck in those ideas. And that makes sense. So just an image, one cue over a very short period of time, didn’t change much for them.”
 

---

Journal

Journal of Science Communication

DOI

10.22323/156920260107081156 

Article Title

You’re the apple of my ambivalence: Can the primary motivational aspects of GMO foods lessen GMO avoidance?

Article Publication Date

7-Apr-2026

 

What guides moral decision-making: rules, the greater good, or fairness?

PNAS Nexus

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Conceptual illustration of the ethical dilemma in the experiement. 

view more 

Credit: Zoh et al.

When making ethical decisions, university students appear to prioritize fairness and the fate of the worst-off over either reducing total harm or obeying unconditional moral precepts, according to a study. Woo-Young Ahn and colleagues designed an experimental dilemma that pits a utilitarian approach—which seeks to minimize total harm—against an approach promoted by philosopher John Rawls, which emphasizes improving the situation of the worst-off person. Fifty-two paid volunteers from a university in South Korea were asked to allocate harm—here, the discomfort of plunging a hand into ice water—while inside fMRI scanners. In each trial, participants pressed buttons to choose between a single person experiencing a hand in ice water or a group of 3 or 4 people each experiencing the same harm for shorter times. Crucially, however, the summed time of the group was larger than the total time for the single person, representing more harm overall. In some trials, the screen shown to participants included a default option already selected. In these cases, participants could not press any buttons at all, avoiding personally causing harm. The authors expected this to be a popular approach for those who wanted to avoid causing harm directly. Most people chose to allocate the harm to the group, causing more harm overall but less unfairness. Participants chose to give 68 seconds of additional icy-cold discomfort to the group, on average, to save the lone individual from being disproportionately targeted. There was little evidence of a bias toward the default option, suggesting that participants did not feel that personally causing harm was prohibited. According to the authors, brain imaging suggests that mentalizing—modeling the mental experiences of others—is involved in this moral decision-making, along with valuation networks.

---

Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

Decomposing the neurocomputational mechanisms of deontological moral preferences

Article Publication Date

7-Apr-2026

 

Who should pay for older adults' care? Caregivers answer differently

Levels of concern about costs of long term care, and access to it, are higher among those who are unpaid caregivers to people over 65, compared with those who aren’t

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

Faceboo

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

video: 

Sarah Patterson, Ph.D., discusses findings from a national survey of people over 50, which finds differences between those who act as unpaid caregivers to older adults, and those who do not, in views about payment, costs and access related to long-term care including nursing homes, home care and assisted living.

view more 

Credit: University of Michigan

When it comes to opinions about paying for, and getting access to, care for older adults, direct experience appears to matter a lot, a new University of Michigan study finds.

People aged 50 and over who serve as unpaid family caregivers for adults over 65 are more likely than non-caregivers to say that the government should have primary responsibility for paying for the care of older Americans, at 51% vs. 43%.

Non-caregivers were more likely to say that families, or older adults themselves, should have primary responsibility for costs.

More than half of all people aged 50 and over say they are very concerned about the cost of long term care for older adults, including home care, assisted living and nursing home care.

But there were differences by caregiver status here, too.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of caregivers said they are very concerned about long term care costs, compared with 54% of non-caregivers.

And when it came to access to quality long term care, 50% of caregivers said they’re very concerned, compared with 36% of non-caregivers.

The new paper, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society by a team from the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, is based on data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging.

The poll of people aged 50 and over, taken in 2024, showed that just under 18% were providing care to a person over 65.

Sarah Patterson, Ph.D., a U-M demographer and sociologist, worked with the poll team on the detailed analyses contained in the new paper. She is a research assistant professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research, in the Survey Research Center.

Even after accounting for demographic differences between caregivers and non-caregivers, the gap in attitudes about payment, and concerns about cost and access persisted.

“While the full sample of adults over 50 appeared to be evenly split between seeing government and families as primary payors, when we took caregiver status into account a clear divide emerged,” said Patterson.

“Previous studies have shown lower rates of support for government-first payment among adults age 65 and older, but we find that including adults ages 50 and older increases support.”

“Because caregivers are more likely to be in their 50s and early 60s, this may be both a generational and an experience-based difference in views,” said John Biziorek, a U-M Medical School student who worked on the study during a summer research experience in Patterson’s laboratory group, supported by IHPI.

While the poll did not ask about direct government payments to caregivers, which have been proposed or enacted in some states and are being discussed at the state and national levels, another recent NPHA poll found that direct payments were a top preference among family caregivers who do not feel they have enough support in their caregiving duties.

That poll, and other past work, have found that caregivers often face high personal financial impacts from their caregiving duties, including lost wages and costs for items and services for the person they care for.

Medicare generally doesn’t cover long term stays in nursing homes, nor any time in assisted living centers. It also doesn’t generally pay family caregivers to take care of someone at home, and paid home health care is covered only under specific circumstances.

Medicaid pays for nearly two-thirds of all long term nursing home care in the United States but is only open to adults with low incomes and limited assets; limits vary by state.

National statistics show that 70% of people who survive to the age of 65 will need long term care services in the future, including nursing home or at-home care, or help with medical care and daily tasks such as making and eating meals, dressing and caring for personal hygiene.

Long-term Care Costs for Older Adults: Poll explores views of people over 50

The new paper is based on data from a poll of 3,216 adults age 50 and over who were surveyed online and via phone in February and March 2024 through the NORC AmeriSpeak panel. More information about the poll methodology is available on the poll site.

Additional data from the poll, including specifics about caregiving for individuals of any age with a health issue or disability, were released in August 2024.

Additional authors: In addition to Patterson and Bizorek, the study’s authors are Adriana Reyes, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Cornell University; deputy poll director Erica Solway, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., statistician Matthias Kirch, M.S., senior project manager Dianne C. Singer, M.P.H., research specialist Sydney N. Strunk, M.P.H., poll director Jeffrey T. Kullgren, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., and associate poll director J. Scott Roberts, Ph.D.

Funding/disclosures: The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging of the NIH (K99AG073473, R00AG073473), and the poll wave from which the data came was funded by both AARP and Michigan Medicine.

Paper cited: “Older Americans' Attitudes Toward Caregiving Cost Responsibility and Long Term Care Access and Costs by Caregiver Status,” JAGS.  DOI: 10.1111/jgs.70385

---

Journal

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

DOI

10.1111/jgs.70385 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Older Americans' Attitudes Toward Caregiving Cost Responsibility and Long Term Care Access and Costs by Caregiver Status