CLINICAL STUDY Association of endogenous testosterone with blood pressure and left ventricular mass in men. The Tromsø Study

• Main Authors: Johan Svartberg, Denise Von Mühlen, Henrik Schirmer, Elizabeth Barrett-connor, Johan Sundfjord, Rolf Jorde
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Tromsø
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.544.6997; http://www.eje.org/content/150/1/65.full.pdf

Objective: To test the hypothesis that lower endogenous testosterone levels are associated with higher blood pressure, left ventricular mass, and left ventricular hypertrophy. Design: Population-based cross-sectional study. Methods: Sex hormone levels, measured by immunoassay, anthropometric measurements and resting blood pressure were studied in 1548 men aged 25–84 years; echocardiography was completed in 1264 of these men. Partial correlations and multiple regressions were used to estimate the associ-ations between sex hormones, blood pressure and left ventricular mass by height. Analyses of vari-ance and covariance were used to compare men with categorical hypertension and left ventricular hypertrophy. Results: In age-adjusted partial correlations, total testosterone and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) were each inversely associated with systolic blood pressure (SBP) (P, 0.001). Men with cat-egorical hypertension (SBP $ 140 or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) $ 90 mmHg) had lower levels of total and free testosterone and SHBG before (P, 0.001, P 0.011 and P, 0.001, respectively) and after (P, 0.001, P 0.035 and P 0.002, respectively) adjusting for body mass index (BMI). Total