Adapted from BMJ 17 Feb 2024
Around a third of US adults have impaired glucose tolerance also known as pre-diabetes. Many of the men also have low testosterone levels. This is known to cause fat accumulation, insulin resistance and type two diabetes.
Testosterone therapy is known to improve muscle mass, reduce fat mass, and improve insulin sensitivity. One would imagine that giving men who have low testosterone and pre-diabetes, hormone replacement therapy, would reduce the onset of type two diabetes.
For unknown reasons, doing this didn’t work.
In men over the age of 45 with low testosterone and pre-diabetes, testosterone gel was no more effective than placebo in reducing the onset of type two diabetes after two years. (13.5% in the active group and 15.7% in the placebo group.) Glycaemic control also failed to improve.
The trial also found out that testosterone replacement therapy also didn’t reduce fractures in hypogonadal men, even though skeletal mass is known to improve with testosterone.
My comment: I’m sure the researchers were disappointed to see this result. My practice was to treat these men with TRT and I am baffled as to these results, as treatment is usually very well tolerated.
Diabetes Diet 