Drug & Device News

A study published in the online journal PLOS One says that the dangers of testosterone boosters are being overlooked, just as their benefits are being oversold to doctors and men experiencing, perhaps, only the effects of normal aging. Finkle WD, Greenland S, Ridgeway GK, Adams JL, Frasco MA, et al. (2014) Increased Risk of Non-Fatal Myocardial Infarction Following Testosterone Therapy Prescription in Men. PLoS ONE 9(1): e85805. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085805. The article, which is available online without fee or subscription, states that in men over the age of 65 with no previous history of miocardial infarction (MI) the likelihood of experiencing MI in the 90 days following an initial prescription of testosterone therapy (TT) was double that of men who did not begin such therapy. In younger men with no previous history of MI, this increased risk was not observed. However, among the younger men who did have a history of cardiac disease (about 10% of these younger men), there was a two- to three-fold increase in the risk of MI during the 90 days following first prescription. These statistics, coupled with the fact that many men are prescribed TT even though they have not been medically tested to see if they actually do have low testosterone levels that warrant treatment, trouble the study's authors, who recommend that physicians discuss the increased risk of MI with their patients before prescribing testosterone therapy drugs.