Scientific literature has produced dozens of articles on its beneficial effects.
Hormone replacement therapy with testosterone, properly prescribed and controlled by a specialist, brings about a huge number of benefits, not only through its impact on improving one’s quality of life, but also by way of its direct association with the prevention and reduction of all causes of age related deaths.
Neolife medical management
Over the last 20 years, scientific literature has presented dozens of articles on the beneficial effects of hormone replacement therapy with testosterone in men suffering from “Adult Androgen Deficiency”. Nevertheless, this type of treatment continues to generate controversy in the scientific world and therefore also in clinics and among the general population.
Frequently, general mass media tends to present more negative news than positive news, and this was the case with the New York Times (1) and El Confidencial in Spain which echoed a meta-analysis that had been published on November 13 (2) by Dr. Vigen, in the prestigious journal JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). In it she warned of the high risk of suffering a non-fatal heart attack in men subjected to hormone replacement therapy with testosterone.
The response was immediate and in the weeks following the publication of this study you could read many comments that were well argued against the study’s conclusions (3, 4). However, perhaps these replies were best summarized in the letter to the editor published March 5, 2014 in the same journal (5), signed by Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, Professor of Urology in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard and probably the world’s leading reference in hormone replacement therapy with testosterone.
In his letter, Dr. Morgentaler enumerates the errors presented in the aforementioned meta-analysis and concludes that their results go against the scientific literature of the last 20 years, and should therefore not be considered when defining Hormone Replacement Therapy with Testosterone as unsafe.
But the story doesn’t end here, several renowned researchers on topics relating to testosterone have created the website www.androgenstudygroup.org (6) where they detail more errors found in Dr. Vigen’s study; among them is the erroneous inclusion of the 1000 patients in the study (where they were surprised to find 100 women had somehow also been included among the men!).
If we consider that an increased risk of a cardiovascular event may affect only a small percentage of men if treated with testosterone, the risk is very low, relating to a minimum percentage of patients where this risk can be mitigated appropriately with low doses of acetysalicylic acid and nitric oxide.
What is clear, and is scientifically and medically proven, is that hormone replacement therapy has multiple benefits, as much for one’s health as for prevention and for one’s quality of life, and therefore the significance of this therapy only increases with age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(2) JAMA. 2013;310(17):1829-1836. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.280386.
(4) https://truttmd.com/brief-comment-yesterdays-ny-times-testosterone-article/
(5) JAMA. 2014;311(9):961-962.doj:10.1001/jama.2014.392
(6) https://www.androgenstudygroup.org/press-releases/91-2014-03-25