Testosterone Offers Women Benefits, Risks

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One expert said Miller's study is important, but cause-and-effect remains unclear. "This study adds to other studies that look at androgens in mood and sexual function," said Dr. Glenn D. Braunstein, the chairman of the department of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. "But it is not clear whether this effect is a direct effect of testosterone or one that is mediated through estrogen," he said.

"Women who have an organic cause of low testosterone, and you give them back testosterone -- you get improvement in mood and sexual function. But I don't think you can extrapolate this beyond the type of women in the study. Studies have to be done in women who have low testosterone from other causes," said Braunstein, who has served as a consultant for Proctor & Gamble and was principal investigator on the original Intrinsa trials.

In the third presentation, Cappola's group reported that high testosterone levels in older women are a predictor of cardiovascular disease.

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"Older women that have higher testosterone levels, for older women, are more likely to have cardiovascular disease than those who have lower levels," the Philadelphia researcher said.

In this study, Cappola and colleagues measured testosterone levels in 344 women, aged 65 to 98 years. They found that women who had the highest testosterone levels were three times more likely to have heart disease compared with women who had lower testosterone levels.

However, they also found that women with the lowest testosterone levels were also at a higher risk of heart disease compared with women who had testosterone levels in the midrange.

Because another hormone, insulin, has long been tied to cardiovascular risk, the researchers adjusted their findings to take insulin resistance into account. This greatly reduced the association between high testosterone and heart disease, they said.

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