Testosterone Offers Women Benefits, Risks

Higher levels may boost sexual function, but increase heart trouble, studies find

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

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TUESDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- Three new studies suggest that testosterone can be of real help, and potential harm, to women.

Women do have natural, low levels of these "male hormones," and improving deficiencies by using a testosterone patch can boost mood and sexual health, two studies found.

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But a third study found that high levels of testosterone can also triple heart risks for older women.

Taken together, the findings underline the fact that "we don't know what really is considered to be a normal or beneficial testosterone level at this point," said Dr. Anne R. Cappola, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, and lead researcher on the heart-risk study.

The studies were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, in Boston.

Testosterone is usually thought of as a male hormone, but women have it, too. For women with androgen (male hormone) deficiency, supplemental testosterone can improve mood, sexual function and quality of life, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reported.

"We thought of testosterone as being a male hormone and estrogen a female hormone," said lead researcher Dr. Karen Miller, an endocrinologist and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "But we are learning more and more that things are not as simple as that," she said.

In their study, Miller's team randomly assigned 51 premenopausal women with below-normal or undetectable levels of testosterone to either a placebo or Proctor & Gamble's testosterone patch, Intrinsa, which has not yet received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use by American women.

During the one-year trial, women on the testosterone patch showed improvements in mood, sexual function and quality of life. There was, however, no change in cognitive function, they reported.

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