PHILADELPHIA - June 20, 2003 - Data from a large sample of pre-menopausal women confirm that testosterone levels decrease with age as healthy women near menopause. The data were presented at ENDO 2003, the 85th Annual Meeting of The Endocrine Society.
"With sensitive testing methods designed to measure low levels of testosterone in women, we have been able to observe a decline in testosterone levels among a large sample of women approaching menopause," said Susan Davis, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the NH&MRC Centre of Clinical Research Excellence in Women's Health at The Jean Hailes Foundation, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. "Research like this will lay the crucial groundwork needed to further our understanding of the role of testosterone in women's health."
Previous studies have suggested that testosterone may impact female sexual interest and other aspects of sexual function, sense of well-being, energy level and bone mass.1 However, to date this area has been under researched and little is known about how testosterone and other hormone levels vary with age prior to menopause and how levels are related to complaints of low libido after menopause
In order to more completely evaluate the relationship between androgen levels and age, investigators not only measured free testosterone and total testosterone, but other hormones produced by the adrenal glands and ovaries, which can be converted to testosterone and therefore indirectly impact testosterone levels. These included dihydrotestosterone (DHT), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) and androstenedione (A).
About the Study
The study included 245 healthy women with normal libido, 170 of who were pre-menopausal and 75 of whom were postmenopausal and on stable estrogen replacement. Sex steroids were measured using sensitive assays, and values were compared between groups and across decades. The data showed that by the time women reached menopause there had been a significant decline in total testosterone, free testosterone, DHT, DHEA and A. Investigators correlated the decline in DHEA-S with the decline in circulating total testosterone (r2 = 0.38) and free testosterone (r2 = 0.49) and concluded that decline in DHEA-S and A may contribute to a decrease in testosterone prior to menopause.
This research was supported by Procter & Gamble.
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1 Bachmann GA, Bancroft J, Braunstein G, et al. Female androgen insufficiency: the Princeton consensus statement on definition, classification, and assessment. Fertil Steril 2002; 77: 660-65.
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