THE idea of giving ageing men hormone replacement therapy has suffered another body blow with the discovery that high doses of testosterone increase sleep disturbances that raise the risk of heart disease. “This shows there are risks other than financial ones,” says team leader David Handelsman of the ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney.
In the US, where drugs are directly marketed to patients, the amount of testosterone prescribed has tripled over the past decade. And while few men in Europe or Australasia currently take testosterone, some private clinics aggressively promote it as a cure-all for male ageing.
Handelsman’s team gave…
