WWW- It may not have been romantic, but they did it for science.

A group of 166 men suffering from premature ejaculation repeatedly had sex with women who were timing them with stopwatches.

Those taking an experimental new drug showed a newfound stamina: three minutes – up from one.

And hey, guys, don’t laugh. That’s more than most of you, sexperts say.

“In the movies, everyone lasts for about 20 minutes. In real life it’s about 2-1/2 minutes,” said Dr. Mark Stein, a urologist at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Manhattan.

Now those couples’ sacrifice for science could lead to a new treatment for premature ejaculation.

Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical company, said yesterday it was asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve the experimental new drug, dapoxetine hydrochloride.

“This potentially could be the first approved medicine to treat PE,” said company spokeswoman Ellen Rose. “It’s a medical condition that has a pretty significant impact on men’s life.”

Many men suffer in silence from premature ejaculation, too embarrassed to seek help, experts say. As many as three men in 10 are reckoned to be, well, trigger-happy.

“It’s something most guys don’t talk about, because they can still get erections, they can still have sex,” Stein said.

Dapoxetine works by regulating the body’s levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin and belongs to the same class of drugs as depression-fighters Zoloft, Paxil and Prozac. All three are sometimes prescribed to treat premature ejaculation.

But those drugs swap one problem for others, decreasing libido and erections, experts say.

Dapoxetine is formulated to avoid the mood-altering qualities of those drugs.