A common injury that is left untreated is a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 214,110 TBI-related hospitalizations in 2020 and 69,473 TBI-related deaths in 2021. Moreover, individuals over the age of 75 had the highest number of hospitalizations related to a TBI. While there are numbers that account for treatments of TBI’s, there are still a great deal of people that do not seek clinical evaluations for mTBI’s which can lead to severe consequences.
Researchers such as Foecking et al. (2022) have underscored the risks of untreated TBI’s in their paper investigating potential of testosterone treatment in enhancing neuronal survival and restoring vestibular function after TBI’s. A month after experiencing moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, 80% of males were found to have decreased serum testosterone levels. In addition, nearly half of the female patients suffered from the cessation of menstrual periods which persisted for up to five years following the TBI. Foecking and colleagues have shed light on the promising future for using androgen hormones like testosterone as a mechanism for neuroprotection against a TBI.
Instances of hypogonadism are frequently accompanied by other morbidities such as type-2 diabetes. Randomized controlled trials have investigated the role of testosterone therapy (TTh) in individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity. A study involving men who were obese and had low to normal levels of testosterone, and were also at a high risk for developing T2D, showed that combining lifestyle alterations with TTh over two years not improved overall metabolic health, but also effectively reversed the onset of T2D. This research suggests an innovative pharmacological tactic with testosterone for the prevention of T2D in men suffering from functional hypogonadism linked to obesity (Wittert & Grossmann, 2022). In addition, there are other investigated mechanisms for how testosterone may help with T2D on a molecular level. In a study with 32 men receiving intramuscular testosterone treatments over a period of 22 weeks, it was observed that testosterone therapy (TTh) contributes to an elevation in both AMPK alpha expression and its phosphorylation which indicates how TTh may enhance the process of insulin signal transduction (Groti Antonič & Zitzmann, 2024).Thus, testosterone's ability to mitigate insulin resistance is also attributed to its anti-inflammatory properties.
While testosterone therapy has been proven to be a significant treatment for not only low testosterone levels, it has also shown to be an effective treatment for reversing and mediating T2D. Interestingly enough, testosterone treatment has demonstrated to help bone mineral density which can also help with osteoporosis. It is evident that Foecking and other researchers have demonstrated the multitude of mechanisms for the usage of hormone therapy and demystifying the clinical wonders behind it. These findings also are key to helping the healthcare field offer different treatments that are not standard to what has been already studied or known for these conditions.
References
Foecking, E. M., Segismundo, A. B., Lotesto, K. M., Westfall, E. J., Bolduan, A. J., Peter, T. K., Wallace, D. G., Kozlowski, D. A., Stubbs, E. B., Marzo, S. J., & Byram, S. C. (2022). Testosterone treatment restores vestibular function by enhancing neuronal survival in an experimental closed-head repetitive mild traumatic brain injury model. Behavioural Brain Research, 433, 113998–113998. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2022.113998
Groti Antonič, K., & Zitzmann, M. (2024). Novel perspectives of testosterone therapy in men with functional hypogonadism: traversing the gaps of knowledge. The Aging Male, 27(1), 2296460–2296460. https://doi.org/10.1080/13685538.2023.2296460
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