A new study from Texas, UAE & Germany! German data.
"To investigate whether testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) reduces prostate cancer (PCa) risk via stabilizing serum testosterone (T) levels beyond simply elevating serum T levels and whether TRT reduces PCa risk due to low serum T levels at a young age."
"We derived an index, Maximum Decline of T Relative to Baseline (MDRB), to describe the magnitude of T declines and variations over time."
"We found the TRT group has more stable serum T levels (e.g. smaller drop-offs) during the follow-up period as compared to the non-TRT group, and the mean of MDRB is significantly higher in the untreated group (1.553 nmol/L VS 0.013 nmol/L ...). TRT significantly reduces the risk of PCa associated with T deficiency at a young age ..."
Seems like something is missing from that, although it's nice to see T deficiency being viewed as a PCa risk factor.
-Patrick
[1] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/308...
Aging Male. 2019 Mar 12:1-7. doi: 10.1080/13685538.2019.1578739. [Epub ahead of print]
Testosterone therapy may reduce prostate cancer risk due to testosterone deficiency at a young age via stabilizing serum testosterone levels.
Zhang X1, Zhong Y2, Saad F3, Haider KS4, Haider A4, Clendenin AG1, Xu X1.
Author information
1
a Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics School of Public Health , Texas A&M University , College Station , TX , USA.
2
b Department of Statistics , Texas A&M University , College Station , TX , USA.
3
c Global Medical Affairs Andrology, Bayer AG, Berlin, Germany and Research Department , Gulf Medical University , Ajman , UAE.
4
d Private Urology Practice , Bremerhaven , Germany.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
To investigate whether testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) reduces prostate cancer (PCa) risk via stabilizing serum testosterone (T) levels beyond simply elevating serum T levels and whether TRT reduces PCa risk due to low serum T levels at a young age.
METHODS:
We analyzed data of 776 hypogonadal men from a urology center in Bremerhaven, Germany through 2004-2016 to investigate whether the TRT group has more stable T levels and whether TRT can reduce the risk of PCa due to low serum T levels at an early age. We derived an index, Maximum Decline of T Relative to Baseline (MDRB), to describe the magnitude of T declines and variations over time.
RESULTS:
We found the TRT group has more stable serum T levels (e.g. smaller drop-offs) during the follow-up period as compared to the non-TRT group, and the mean of MDRB is significantly higher in the untreated group (1.553 nmol/L VS 0.013 nmol/L; p-value < .001). TRT significantly reduces the risk of PCa associated with T deficiency at a young age (p-value = .00087).
CONCLUSIONS:
TRT may reduce PCa risk via maintaining serum T levels within individual's normal range; T surveillance may be needed for males who have low serum T levels at a young age to monitor abnormal variations of T levels and ensure timely treatment when necessary to reduce PCa risk.
KEYWORDS:
Prostate cancer; long-term fluctuations of testosterone levels; testosterone deficiency; testosterone replacement therapy
PMID: 30857458 DOI: 10.1080/13685538.2019.1578739