Not Hair Loss News – Is Low Testosterone Just a Well-Marketed Disease?

Snippet from the article:

American men aged 40 years or older tripled their use of androgen replacement therapy (ART) between 2001 and 2011, including a greater than 5-fold surge in use of the hormone testosterone as a topical gel, according to a recent analysis.

Jacques Baillargeon, PhD, from the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health and the Sealy Center on Aging, both at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and colleagues report their findings in a research letter published in the August 12/26 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

Dr. Baillargeon and colleagues studied prescription drug claims data from Clinformatics DataMart, which tracks employment-based commercial health insurance plans. Some 10.74 million men aged 40 years or older were included in the study population.

During the study period, androgen use rose among men 40 years or older from 0.81% in 2001 to 2.91% in 2011. “By 2011, 2.29% of men in their 40s and 3.75% of men in their 60s were taking some form of ART,” Dr. Baillargeon and colleagues write.

Read the rest — Low Testosterone: Medical Problem or Marketing Tool?

Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors note that sales or these testosterone therapies have more than doubled since 2006 and are forecast to triple to $5 billion within the next few years. They also suggest that the rise in prescriptions was driven by pharmaceutical companies’ marketing efforts to consumers; or in other words, making money for some drug companies may overwhelm what is in the best interest of the public.