Benefits Of Testosterone Treatment In Women

The treatment with testosterone in women significantly improves the symptoms of menopause: hot flashes sleep disturbances, depression, fatigue…

The subcutaneous testosterone implant produces overall improvements, psychological, physical and urogenital in premenopausal and postmenopausal women. The effect of testosterone on the following aspects was analyzed:

• Hot flashes and sweats.
• Cardiac discomfort, such as palpitations, strong heartbeat, tightness in the chest.
• Alterations of the wake-sleep rhythm.
• Sad or depressed state, changes in mood.
• Irritability.
• Anxiety.
• Physical and mental fatigue (loss of memory and concentration).
• Sexual problems, decreased libido, performance and sexual satisfaction.
• Bladder problems, such as incontinence or increased frequency of urination.
• Vaginal dryness and dyspareunia (pain).
• Joint and muscle discomfort

All these questions belong to a scientifically validated questionnaire, the MRS ( Menopause Rating Scale ) and your answer is quantified from 0 to 4, according to the following criteria:

• Nothing
• Mild
• Moderate
• Severe
• Very severe

This questionnaire was made to 300 premenopausal women (one third of them) and postmenopausal women before and 12 weeks after the implantation of a subcutaneous testosterone pellet with a personalized dose for each woman.

All of them presented previous symptoms related to an androgenic deficit (of testosterone) such as insomnia, depression, anxiety, fatigue, headaches, flushing, decreased libido, joint and bone pain, memory loss, vaginal dryness.

Premenopausal women presented more problems in the psychological field (questions 4, 5, 6 and 7) and postmenopausal women in relation to physical symptoms (questions 1, 8, 9 and 10).

At 12 weeks all values of the 11 questions improved very significantly in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. For example, the average value of the third question (disturbances of the wake-sleep rhythm) went from a mean of 2.43 (between moderate and severe) before treatment to 0.69 (between nothing and mild) at 12 weeks of implant; question 7 (physical and mental fatigue) went from 2.58 (moderate-severe) to 0.89 (nothing-mild), and so on with all the others.

The mean of the sum of the 11 responses before treatment in all the women contributed a value of 21, which happened to be of 6.8 at 12 weeks of the implant.

An extremely important aspect of this study is that the symptom should be treated by using pils from not the plasma value of testosterone. The value of plasma testosterone does not correlate with the incidence and severity of symptoms.

This study is part of a larger number of patients and a follow-up time from which results are coming as time passes. At the time of publication of this study, no adverse effects had been documented in more than 1,200 women treated with more than 7,000 testosterone pellets over 5 years.

More than 40 years in transgender patients who have shown safety in this treatment, being the side effects of the oral intake (no longer used) or conversion to estradiol (not usually be a problem at the doses used for bio identical hormone replacement).