June 21, 2018 – Measuring Testosterone

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Anchor lead: Should postmenopausal women have their testosterone level measured? Elizabeth Tracey reports

How can we explain why women who’ve experienced menopause have a much increased risk of cardiovascular disease? The culprit may be higher testosterone levels, research by Erin Michos, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown. Testosterone is a type of hormone known as an androgen and is dominant in men.

Michos: Higher levels of androgen in women were associated with increased blood pressure, with glucose intolerance, adverse lipid profile, and all those things taken together can place a woman at risk. We accounted for those factors as much as we could and we showed that higher levels of androgen still placed a woman at higher risk. So I think at this time although we’re not currently screening for hormone levels that might be something that one might do in the future to consider as part of other labs that we get to identify individuals at risk.    :31

Testosterone is normally found in women but becomes more dominant after menopause. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.