Sex and Swedish 85-Year-Olds

To the Editor: Most studies of sexual behavior include few subjects older than 80 years of age and are conducted in highly selected samples. Our knowledge of sexual behavior in this older age group is therefore limited, but a stereotype prevails that elderly persons are asexual. My colleagues and I therefore studied sexual behavior in a representative sample of 321 85-year-olds without dementia who were living in Goteborg, Sweden. The subjects were 223 women (21 married and 202 not married) and 98 men (55 married and 43 not married). The sample has been described in detail previously.1 All subjects were . . .