Both Men and Women may Benefit from Extra Testosterone
A team of pharmacists at the Institute of Pharmacy of University Jena (Germany) have discovered that testosterone plays an important role in fighting inflammation and its associated diseases. The findings have been published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Doctors have long noted that men are less likely to suffer from conditions like arthritis, psoriasis and asthma, which are generally thought of as being inflammation related. However, there was no previous explanation for why this is. The new findings suggest that the situation may be a result of lower testosterone levels in women.
“It is mostly women who are affected by inflammatory disease “, explains professor Dr. Oliver Werz from the Institute of Pharmacy of University Jena. His team concluded that the male sex hormones play a key role in the modulation of the immune response.
This would also explain another phenomenon that has been previously noticed, that is, testosterone can protect men from arteriosclerosis (stiffening of the arteries) a disease that accounts for nearly 75 percent of all deaths from cardiovascular disease, according to the American Heart Association 2001 Heart and Stroke Statistical Update.
For the study, researchers exposed both male and female tissue to inflammatory immune system cells. The female tissue, along with samples taken from men with low testosterone, had stronger inflammatory responses. That means the less testosterone that was present, the great the inflammation.
The researchers said that testosterone testing and treatment could eventually lead to improved therapies for inflammatory conditions that could be useful for both men and women.
Reference: C. Pergola, A. Rogge, G. Dodt, H. Northoff, C. Weinigel, D. Barz, O. Radmark, L. Sautebin, O. Werz. Testosterone suppresses phospholipase D, causing sex differences in leukotriene biosynthesis in human monocytes. The FASEB Journal, 2011; DOI: 10.1096/fj.11-182758
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