A new Swedish study has found that hypersexuality, also called sex addiction, may be linked to an overactive stress system. In a stress regulation test using dexamethasone, oversexed men had higher than normal levels of stress hormones. The study was published in Psychoneuroendocrinology. The study involved 67 hypersexualized men and 39 healthy controls. The researchers gave them a low dose of the hormone drug dexamethasone the night before the test, then measured their levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) the next morning. The results found that men in the hypersexual group had higher levels of stress hormones than the control group, with significant differences even after controlling for co-occurring depression and childhood trauma. The study suggests that hypersexuality is also associated with neurobiological systems that play a role in other types of addiction. This study is the first to identify neurobiological mechanisms in patients with hypersexuality.