“We hope that our findings can encourage further research into how testosterone could be used safely and effectively as part of individualized menopausal care.”<\/p>\n
Today, testosterone replacement therapy is best established as a bone treatment for men with low testosterone levels.<\/p>\n
But preliminary evidence suggests this therapy may work for women, too.<\/p>\n
Estrogen levels are usually named as the main culprit for bone loss in women, but they may not act alone.<\/p>\n After menopause, when menstruation ceases, estrogen levels are known to drop rapidly, and this is a major cause of weak, porous bones in older age.<\/p>\n For decades now<\/a>, estrogen therapy has been used to protect against bone loss in some older patients.<\/p>\n Replacing<\/a> this hormone can increase bone density and reduce fractures in both the spine and the hip<\/a> in postmenopausal women.<\/p>\n But testosterone can also decrease with age, and recent studies<\/a> have found evidence that it is linked to bone health, not just in older men but in women<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n In 2022, for instance, a population-based study\u00a0among females aged 40 to 60 years in the US found that testosterone levels were positively associated with bone mineral density in the lumbar spine.<\/p>\n “According to the literature, it is basically clear that testosterone promotes bone mineral density in males,” the authors wrote<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n But by contrast, the researchers said, evidence for females is “sparse and controversial.”<\/p>\n To see if testosterone can improve estrogen therapy’s benefits for women’s bones, this new study analyzed the health outcomes of 51 postmenopausal participants.<\/p>\n These individuals were each prescribed hormone therapy at the same private hospital.<\/p>\n All the participants tried two therapies, each for at least a year, and typically for several years. One involved just estrogen, and the other involved both estrogen and testosterone.<\/p>\n X-ray scans measured their bone mineral density at the start of the trial, and then again, one year into each type of therapy.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, researchers found that estrogen therapy alone kept bone density stable, but didn’t significantly increase it at any of the locations examined: not the lumbar spine, the femoral neck, or the hip.<\/p>\n But estrogen plus testosterone therapy did increase bone density scores for the lumbar spine.<\/p>\n “These findings suggest that testosterone may exert a synergistic effect with estrogen on trabecular bone, particularly at the spine, and may offer enhanced skeletal benefit beyond estrogen alone,” the authors conclude<\/a> in an abstract supplied for the recent conference.<\/p>\n It’s unclear whether these changes in spinal density are sufficient to reduce fracture risk, which is the main measure of success in osteoporosis treatment.<\/p>\n But the results support the idea that testosterone may have a role to play in protecting bone health as we age.<\/p>\n In 2023, researchers at Monash University in Australia launched a trial to test this, noting<\/a> that “there is some evidence that the addition of testosterone to estrogen replacement therapy might prevent bone loss and restore sexual function in women with early menopause.”<\/p>\n That same year, a small trial<\/a> found that testosterone therapy alone or in combination with low-dose estrogen therapy can improve spine and hip bone density.<\/p>\n But larger and longer trials are still needed, and these studies need to demonstrate reductions in fracture risk, not just increases in bone density.<\/p>\n Knowing these clinical outcomes is key to evaluating the risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapy, which should be carefully weighed by clinicians and patients.<\/p>\n For now, it’s important to recognize that testosterone is an essential hormone for the female body, impacting everything from the brain to the heart.<\/p>\n How it affects our bones is a mystery we are only just starting to crack.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Rebecca Dyer<\/a> and edited by Rebecca Dyer<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Testosterone has historically been considered a ‘male’ sex hormone, but that outdated notion may be preventing better treatments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[163,85,46,371],"class_list":["post-657503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Adding](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/615_Age_and_Bone_Mass.jpg\")
Bone mass peaks in early adulthood in both men and women, but declines more rapidly in women as they age, particularly after menopause. (OpenStax College\/Wikimedia Commons\/CC BY 3.0<\/a>)<\/p>\n