{"id":9876,"date":"2004-04-02T22:06:28","date_gmt":"2004-04-02T22:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/?p=9876"},"modified":"2014-05-22T18:29:58","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T18:29:58","slug":"testosterone-therapy-for-women-with-low-androgen-levels-or-body-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/9876","title":{"rendered":"Testosterone therapy for women with low androgen levels or body weight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Polly Clayden, HIV i-Base<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Dr Dolan from the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA, presented findings from a double blind, placebo controlled study to evaluate the safety, efficacy and tolerability of testosterone administered to women with reduced androgen levels and low body weight.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A group of 57 HIV-positive women whose free testosterone was less than the median of the normal reference range, and whose weight was less than 90% of the ideal body weight (or whose weight loss was greater than 10%), were randomised to receive transdermal testosterone (4mg per patch) twice weekly (n=29) or placebo (n=28) for a period of six months.<\/p>\n<p>The effect of the treatment was assessed in two ways: muscle mass was assessed by urinary creatinine excretion and muscle function was assessed by the Tufts Quantitative Muscle Function Test.<\/p>\n<p>The investigators reported that at baseline all women had low weight (body mass index = 20.6+\/-0.4 kg\/m 2), significant weight loss from pre-illness maximum (18.7+\/-1.2%), and reduced muscle function.<\/p>\n<p>Among the women receiving the testosterone treatment there was significant rise in testosterone levels (total testosterone: 37+\/-5 vs \u20132+\/-2 ng\/dL, p&lt;0.0001; free testosterone: 3.7+\/-0.5 vs -0.4+\/-0.3 pg\/mL, p&lt;0.0001, testosterone and placebo arms respectively). The investigators observed that the testosterone was well tolerated, without adverse effects on immune function, lipids, glucose, liver function, body composition, or hirsuitism.<\/p>\n<p>They also reported an increase in muscle mass (1.4+\/-0.6 vs 0.3+\/-0.8 kg, p=0.082). Muscle function in shoulders (0.4+\/-0.3 vs -0.5+\/-0.3 kg, p=0.023), elbows (0.3+\/-0.4 vs -0.7+\/-0.4 kg, p=0.036), knee extension (0.2+\/-1.0 vs -1.7+\/-1.3 kg, p=0.019) and knee flexion (0.7+\/-0.5 vs 0.3+\/-0.7 kg, p=0.036) increased in the women receiving testosterone compared to the women receiving placebo.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Dolan concluded: \u201cTestosterone administration is well-tolerated and increases muscle strength in low-weight HIV-infected women. Testosterone administration may be a useful adjunctive therapy to maintain muscle function in symptomatic HIV-infected women, but we need to find the optimal dosing strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Comment<\/h3>\n<p><strong>In general, steroids should be combined with regular physical exercise to improve the lean weight gain. This may explain the non-significant difference in muscle mass.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Reference:<\/p>\n<p>Dolan S, Wilkie S, Aliabadi N et al. Effects of testosterone administration in HIV-infected women with low weight: A randomised, placebo-controlled study. 11th CROI 2004, Abstract 151.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polly Clayden, HIV i-Base Dr Dolan from the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA, presented findings from a double blind, placebo controlled study to evaluate the safety, efficacy and tolerability of testosterone administered to women with reduced androgen levels and low &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,44],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-9876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reports","category-womens-health","tag-croi-2004"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}