Sabrina Johnson
Management
Yes. Great question and great reminder to sort of refresh everyone on where we feel we already have great clarity from the FDA based on our December meeting and where really, given that this is the first Phase III study of its kind, where reasonably the FDA needs a little more time to go through all of the information we provided.
So to your question. So first of all, importantly, the patient population and the indication statement and the duration of the efficacy period, have all been agreed with the FDA. So the indication statement is treatment of female sexual arousal disorder, very straightforward. The patient population are women with female sexual arousal disorder, including women who may as a result, right, as their arousal disorder have a decrease in desire. That's very common. It's not only common in female sexual arousal disorder. It's the same thing that happens in a rectal dysfunction. So very common for an erasable dysfunction to lead to a decrease in desire. So that's the patient population.
And then in terms of the duration of the efficacy assessment, the FDA guidance document for conditions of this nature, it actually includes a few different sexual dysfunctions but arousal disorder is in there suggest that 24-week studies may be necessary for Phase III. But based on our end of Phase II meeting with the FDA and frankly, just a number of sexual events that women had in our study and our ability to show how much data you can capture in a 12-week period in terms of experiences with the product FDA was comfortable that an adequately powered 12-week efficacy study would be sufficient.
So those are places where we've got good clarity. And that does, by the way, give us a lot in terms of -- that's part of why we're able to get so much prepped right now because it tells you a lot in terms of funding, right, things like that for the duration that are needed. Where we still have some outstanding questions or in a couple of areas. One is just really understanding what ultimately may be necessary also to support safety and exposure data on the product. So we included partners, for instance, in our Phase IIb study to see exposure to partners, right? We have the 12-week safety data from that. So we want to make sure we're clearly aligned on any expectations in that regard.
And then second, we want to make sure that we're clearly aligned on the endpoint. And so your question was around so what have we suggested. So just as a reminder, the Phase IIb study that the primary endpoint in the Phase IIb was actually a co-primary endpoint. We had section of a questionnaire called the sexual function questionnaire. We ask specifically the arousal sensation questions from that questionnaire as part of our co-primary, it's 4 questions about genital sensations of arousal. So physical things that a woman is going to be feeling in her general tissue. There are questions that are really highly linked to what happens when you get increased blood flow to the area, which is what Sildenafil does but we also asked a particular question about distress.
So the diagnostic criteria for rectal dysfunction and female sexual arousal disorder include that inability to attain or maintain the physical genital arousal response in men and women, respectively, of those indications. But also, in both cases, also indicates that, that dysfunction causes personal distress. So in our Phase IIb, we had a question about distress. So part of what we've -- and then we had a number of exploratory endpoints, questions about desire questions about orgasm and lots of other different particular questions about distress. We chose in the Phase IIb a particular question about concern but that same questionnaire has questions about guilt and feeling inadequate and being stressed about the condition, has 15 total questions.
So part of what we presented to the phase for the Phase III to the FDA is a very robust analysis of the Phase IIb data that includes what's called the psychometric analysis. It's part of validating all these different patient reported outcomes. And we've made our recommendation of the hierarchy, right? This is a relative disorder. So obviously, the arousal sensations should continue to be a part of the primary. But other than that, what really belongs in the secondary.
And we saw improvements in orgasm. We saw improvements in desire. We saw improvements in multiple questions. from the interpersonal difficulty in distress scale. So we'd like to have an opportunity to collect and include in our trial and include a potential to include in the label as many of these other aspects of the condition as possible. So that is what the FDA is reviewing right now is -- and for each of those, we've established through exit interviews from our Phase II. What is a clinically meaningful improvement.
It's not just enough to have a statistical improvement, but what matters to the woman. And so that's what the FDA is looking at right now. Our proposal for arousal sensations clearly should be primary, but then what goes into secondary and if there's a hierarchy, what's that hierarchy. And our focus has been on all these different aspects of the sexual experience where we saw a clinically meaningful improvement, we're interested in including those in our Phase III study if possible.
So sorry for the long response but hopefully, that helps very clearly outline why we're excited about the data we generated in Phase II, but also why it takes a little time for the FDA to go through, right, go through all of this. This is all brand new. We're the first sponsor that ever did anything like this.