Episode 1: Controversies of Testosterone Therapy: Lecture by Dr Mohit Khera

Nelson Vergel's Podcasts

Nelson Vergel from ExcelMale.com and DiscountedLabs.com interviews Dr. Mohit Khera, one of the world's top experts in urology and testosterone therapy with over 100 publications. He debunks myths about testosterone and prostate cancer, cardiovascular risks and DVT / blood clots. He discusses the use of hCG, clomiphene and other products. He also reviews data on natural ways to increase your own body's testosterone production. For more information visit: Testosterone Interviews on ExcelMale There have been significant controversies with the use of testosterone therapy over the past five years. Cardiovascular risk, DVT, prostate cancer, BPH, and today I’d like to discuss some of those controversies and give you some further insight into the diagnosis and treatment of hypogonadism. The first is on the concept of venous thrombosis embolism or VTE, and so you should be aware that in the package insert of a testosterone products in 2005 in the adverse reactions section of the label, it was appended to note that one patient during the open-label extension trial did suffer from the DVT. Now in 2009, the label was changed again under the new medication guide that lists blood clots in the legs among the serious side effects. If you open the package insert for testosterone products, you will see, and this is just for Androgel, that they do put in the section warnings and precaution a concern for VTE. I’ll read this. There have been post-marketing reports of VTE events including DVT, PE in patients using testosterone products, Androgel in this case. Evaluate patients who report symptoms of pain, edema, warmth, and erythema in the lower extremity for DVT and those who present with acute shortness of breath for PE. If a VTE is suspected, discontinue treatment with testosterone and initiate appropriate workup and management. The second controversy is cardiovascular risk. Many of you may be aware of this. There was a significant amount of concern at one point that testosterone may cause a heart attack. So I’ll put this in the context of a story. It was very interesting, Molly Shores in 2006 published a very nice study looking at men at the VA and what she found was that those men with lower testosterone levels were much more likely to suffer from earlier death. They died earlier or sooner than men with normal testosterone levels. If you look at the studies following the Molly Shore study, they were prospective studies, larger studies, all finding the same thing. Those men with lower testosterone levels tended to have increased mortality, and if you look at the right-hand column, the cause of death seemed to be cardiovascular death in many of these studies. Find out more by listening to the entire episode!