Top Features

Team MD'S #1 CONTEST COVERAGE

 chem corner62422

 

 

Low Testosterone and Alzheimer’s

 

Testosterone therapy may ultimately be shown to reduce Alzheimer’s risk, which would make this an even more valuable tool for protecting health as we age.

 

By William Llewellyn

 

The studies linking low testosterone to poor health in elderly men have been mounting for years now. I came across a paper published in the journal Molecular Neurobiology, which examined the link between testosterone levels and the likelihood of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.1 Alzheimer’s is, of course, a debilitating disease characterized by progressive cognitive decline and dementia. It is estimated to affect more than 5 million Americans, and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Numbers are unfortunately on the rise in our aging population, leading to urgency among researchers to seek out potential causes and treatments. This research may be important, because it is a large analysis that seems to greatly strengthen an association between low testosterone and this disease.

 

The paper in question is a meta-analysis. This means that the researchers did not conduct new experiments, but rather pooled the data from several previously published studies together for recalculation. We’ve discussed a couple of the individual papers here before. This type of investigation is conducted to potentially strengthen (or weaken) the statistical associations found in the smaller studies. In this case, the researchers looked at seven different studies on testosterone and Alzheimer’s. These involved a total of 5,251 elderly men and 240 individual cases of the disease. When these papers were analyzed together, the researchers also came back with a significantly increased relative risk of Alzheimer’s in subjects with clinically low testosterone levels. The relative risk was calculated to be 1.48 here. This means that there was a 48% greater chance of having the disease – quite a remarkable number! Low testosterone was also shown to be a risk factor for worse cognitive performance in general.

 

This paper is important in potentially furthering our understanding of testosterone, and its role in cognitive and physical health. We cannot yet draw too many conclusions, however. These types of studies are not designed to determine causality. We technically don’t know if low testosterone contributed to these Alzheimer’s cases directly, resulted from it, or was a coincidental trait of those predisposed to it. The researchers also have not evaluated the influence of testosterone supplementation on disease prevention or progression. Still, these results underline that there is some association here, and beg for more research to understand it. It is conceivable that testosterone therapy may ultimately be shown to reduce Alzheimer’s risk, which would make this an even more valuable tool for protecting health as we age.

 

William Llewellyn is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the use of performance-enhancing substances. He is the author of the bestselling anabolic steroid reference guide ANABOLICS and CEO of Molecular Nutrition. William is an accomplished researcher/developer in the field of anabolic substances, and is also a longtime advocate for harm reduction and legislative change. He built the website anabolic.org, an extensive online database of information on anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

 

Reference:

 

1. Lv W, Du N, et al. Low Testosterone Level and Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease in the Elderly Men: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Mol Neurobiol 2015;Jul 8. [Epub, ahead of print]

            

Latest NEWS