RATIONALE FOR ANDROGEN THERAPY IN GYNECOLOOY

Abstract

THE FAST three years, many reports have appeared on the therapeutic properties of a synthetic male hormone (testosterone) in the treatment of a variety of functional gynecological conditions, the menopause (1–5), functional bleeding (6–17) dysmenorrhea (18,19), mastopathies (6,20, 21), lactation (22, 23) and pre-menstrual tension (18, 24). A survey of the literature reveals that the studies on the use of this hormone in women are almost entirely clinical in character. It must be confessed that the experience of the past few years has engendered con-siderable skepticism about the value of purely clinical reports when dealing with the evaluation of a new endocrine therapeutic agent. One need but review the literature of the past 6 or 7 years and recall the glowing reports describing the brilliant therapeutic results attributed to chorionic gonadotropic hormone, pituitary extracts, corpus luteum substances, estrogens, etc., in doses which subsequently were shown to be inadequate for any physiologic effect, t...