Testosterone and the Heart Part 1

Nov. 13, 2013 - PRLog -- How Not to Do a Testosterone Clinical Trial

A testosterone study by Bhasin published in the New England Journal was halted early because the testosterone treated group had more heart attacks.  The study participants were a very skewed population of immobilized, elderly, obese, men with underlying heart disease. Most were heavy smokers with advanced heart disease on Lipitor and blood pressure meds. These results are opposite to decades of research showing testosterone benefits the heart.  I would suggest that giving virtually anything to these men to get them moving around would cause the same increase in heart attack rate.

Sending Old Men Up the Hill

If we recruited a group of immobilized, obese, elderly frail men with heart disease, and then instructed them to run up a mountain hill, they would be unable to go more than a few steps, and no harm would come from it. However, if this same group used testosterone gel for a few weeks, the testosterone would give them the leg muscle strength to run up the hill and many would succumb to heart attacks. This is a nutshell is what happened in the New England Journal, Bhasin study.  Again, I would suiggest that virtually any drug stimulation would accomplish the same increase heart attack risk, simply by making the men more active.

(For a complete review and more information on the BENEFITS of testosterone treament visit http://jeffreydachmd.com/2013/11/testosterone-heart-jeffr... )