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Male Menopause or Andropause! A drug-inspired `myth'
There have been decades of clever research that suggested that men as well as women have a menopause: But now a researcher has debunked the theory saying, the condition is “an invented syndrome created by drug companies” to sell testosterone replacement therapies.
His name is John McKinley, the senior vice-president at the US-based New England Research Institutes and he is an epidemiologist and he told The Australian Newspaper there was no evidence to support theories on male menopause, or andropause.
``The male menopause is a myth that is a creation of the pharmaceutical industry and there is no endocrinological or epidemiological support for the notion,'' Dr McKinlay said.
``It is a fiction and the treatment of this may lead to an increase of certain diseases, particularly prostate cancer.''
Now Dr McKinlay is no Johnnie Come Lately, and he has held academic positions at Boston University and Harvard Medical School, and not only that he has studied almost 2000 men over the past 25 years.
He found that in men between the ages 40 and 70 the male hormone, Testosterone dropped by up to 1 per cent a year and said that unlike the female situation where it’s all, at a hurray, in men it's a very, very gradual decline.
The idea of a male menopause or Andropause, were first raised in the 1940s and have recently focused on readily available, testosterone replacement treatments.
Dr McKinlay feared the medical profession would fail to learn from previous hormone therapy mistakes, and thinks that if there is a testosterone therapy it could well lead to an increase in prostate cancer in men.
I’ll keep my eye on this, talk with the Prostate Cancer experts and keep you up to date with the way science is moving.
Dr John D’Arcy. March 2009
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