“All-cause mortality” or death by all causes has been shown to increase in men who have deficiencies of testosterone. A new study, conducted in Germany, recently came to this conclusion.
In this study, The Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP), the researchers looked at death rates from any cause in almost 2,000 men aged 20 to 79 years. The average follow-up period averaged 7 years.
At the beginning of the study, 5 percent of these men had low blood testosterone levels, defined as the lower end of the normal range for young adult men. The men with low testosterone were older, more obese, and had a greater prevalence of diabetes and high blood pressure, compared with men who had higher testosterone levels.
The study found that men with low testosterone levels had more than 2.5 times greater risk of dying during the next 10 years compared to men with higher testosterone. Age, smoking, alcohol intake, level of physical activity, or increased waist circumference (a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease) was controlled for and did not have explain this significant difference.
They also looked at the cause-specific death rate. An analysis of the men with low testosterone also predicted an increased risk of death due to cardiovascular disease and cancer(all cancers) but not death of any other single cause.
The study did not separate out men, or look at men who were on a