Testosterone Therapy Does Not Raise Heart Attack Risk

the Renal and Urology News take:

Testosterone therapy for men who produce little to no hormones does not increase their risk of heart attack, according to a study published in the Annals of Pharmacology.

Testosterone use has skyrocketed in recent years, but the studies about its effects have yielded conflicting evidence. Although a large body of evidence found that testosterone therapy does not have any cardiovascular risks, recent studies have found an increased risk of heart attack. Researchers wanted to help definitively determine whether testosterone treatment has any cardiovascular risk.

To conduct the study, researchers compared Medicare records of 6,355 men who had at least one testosterone injection between 1997 and 2005 with 19,065 nontestosterone users. Testosterone-using patients received an average of 8.2 injections over the study period, with an average of 4.4 in the first year. Their results showed that testosterone therapy prescribed for hypergonadism was not associated with an increased risk of heart attack.

In fact, patients who had a higher probability of cardiovascular problems had a 30% lower rate of heart attacks than patients with the same probability of cardiovascular problems who were not receiving testosterone therapy.The study was limited to patients in the Houston area. Researchers noted that a large-scale, randomized trial is needed for more definitive evidence.