Testosterone therapy may boost serious risks in men with heart troubles

vigilantemma.com

Brian Alexander, NBC News

Watch any football game or a news program, and you’re almost sure to see one of those commercials about how a-little-dab’ll-do-ya of testosterone can banish the “low-T” blues and put spark back into your life.

The ads work. Almost 3 percent of American men aged 40 and older have been prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. According to figures compiled by BloombergBusinessweek, sales of testosterone drugs could reach $5 billion by 2017.

But a study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association is sure to raise questions about the wisdom behind the testosterone rush. It finds that among men with previous heart troubles and low testosterone levels, the use of 'low-T' therapy boosted the risk of serious problems including heart attack, stroke — and death.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas reviewed records from more than 8,700 men with low-T levels who underwent coronary angiography — a procedure that uses dye and X-rays to peer into heart arteries — in the Veterans Affairs system between 2005 and 2011.

Of nearly 7,500 guys who did not get extra T, about 1 in 5 had bad cardiovascular outcomes, including stroke, heart attack or death. In the more than 1,200 men who got testosterone, nearly 1 in 4 percent had those terrible problems, an increased risk of nearly 30 percent.

The researchers concluded that taking testosterone came with an increased risk of an adverse outcome.

That’s not the whole story, though. Dr. Anne Cappola of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania wrote in an accompanying editorial: “The most important question is the generalizability of the results of this study to the broader population of men taking testosterone ….”

That’s a very big caveat: By definition, all the men in the study were older than 60 and all had heart problems. It's still not clear whether those same risks apply to younger, healthier guys.

“These were sick, older veterans,” Dr. Michael Ho, a cardiologist with the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System who helped direct the study, said in an interview. Many were obese, had diabetes, and other ailments, he said.

Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Washington, agreed — but only to a point.

“This is a modestly cautionary study about giving testosterone to men over 60 with multiple” health problems, he said in an interview.

Some men might do just fine with a little extra T, experts say.

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