A new study, published in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine, has reported that men with low testosterone levels have a higher death risk.
The study titled, Associations of Testosterone and Related Hormones With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality and Incident Cardiovascular Disease in Men: Individual Participant Data Meta-analyses, was carried out by researchers from the University of Western Australia and researchers from Australia, North America, and Europe.
The team analysed data from previous studies that tracked men with testosterone levels for at least five years with specific on those that measured testosterone levels very precisely.
The data shows that men with a testosterone concentration below 5.3 Nanomoles per litre (mol/L) had an increased risk of cardiovascular death.
Their key finding was that men with very low testosterone levels had a higher risk of dying from any cause, regardless of their luteinising hormone (also sometimes called lutropin, it is a chemical messenger produced by the pituitary gland. It acts like a signal to other parts of the body, telling them what to do) levels.
They also found an even lower testosterone level linked to an increased risk of death specifically from heart disease.
“Men with low testosterone, high LH, or very low estradiol concentrations had increased all-cause mortality. Sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) concentration was positively associated and DHT concentration was nonlinearly associated with all-cause and CVD mortality,” the researchers stated in the conclusion of the study.
