Testosterone, Men's Health Week and Father's Day

To celebrate Men's Health Week, June 11th-17th,, ending on Father's Day, there will be some good news for men aged forty-plus. After the bad news last week that men with low testosterone live shorter lives, the message this week is that men with symptoms of insufficient testosterone benefit from treatment, and that this is safe long-term.

In a plenary session of the inaugural meeting of The European Society for the Study of the Aging Male in Warsaw, a team from Britain will be presenting new evidence that testosterone treatment is safe for use both in the prevention and treatment of many disorders that impair men's health from midlife onwards.

Dr Ewa Jankowska, a Polish cardiologist working at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, reports studies suggesting that in men with low testosterone levels and heart disease, hormone supplementation may be beneficial by improving body composition, exercise capacity, depressive symptoms and overall quality of life. Recent research suggests that testosterone treatment has a variety of wider health benefits as well as being safe in cases of circulatory disease and chronic heart failure.

Dr Malcolm Carruthers from The Centre for Men's Health in Harley Street, President of the Society for the Study of Androgen Deficiency-SSAD (Andropause Society) will be reporting on the results of the UK Androgen Study (UKAS). This is a detailed study of 1,675 men with symptomatic testosterone deficiency treated with different forms of the hormone for up to 15 years, giving 2,400 years of use. The 3-6 monthly blood tests have shown how the each of the treatments, old and new, give very different hormone profiles. With the basic checks carried out as part of a general medical approach to maintaining men's health, all the treatments used in this long-term study have proved both safe and effective in relieving the lack of energy and sex drive, erection problems and low mood characterizing low testosterone states.

Mr Mark Feneley from The Institute of Urology, University College, London, who is Chairman of SSAD, will be emphasizing the need for careful screening of the prostate before and during treatment. This latest data from the UKAS study shows that testosterone treatment can be used for many years without complications of benign enlargement, and that the development of malignancy is not only rare but can be reliably detected at an early and curable stage in the men on this treatment.

The availability of various products licenced for treatment of testosterone deficiency, most recently gels including Testim by Ipsen Ltd, and last week Tostran by ProStrakan, makes this safety news even more timely and important.

Conference Abstracts

1. SAFETY OF LONG-TERM TESTOSTERONE TREATMENT IN RELATION TO RESULTING ENDOCRINE PROFILES M. Carruthers, M.R. Feneley

2. CARDIOVASCULAR SAFETY OF TESTOSTERONE E. A. Jankowska

3. PROSTATE SAFETY AND TESTOSTERONE TREATMENT M.R. Feneley, M. Carruthers

For further details and interviews contact Dr Malcolm Carruthers, The Centre for Men's Health, on 0207 636 8283, or the SSAD website www.andropause.org.uk