Research

Hormonal

Higher total and free testosterone levels are associated with increased mortality from lung cancer in older men, potentially due to hormonal stimulation of tumor growth or residual confounding by smoking.

In older men, higher testosterone levels were linked to higher lung cancer death rates in this study. However, the authors suggest this might be due to smoking habits rather than testosterone itself. Do not assume high testosterone causes cancer, but be aware of the association in observational data.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Higher total testosterone and free testosterone levels (sub-hazard ratio (cid:1) 1.96; 95% CI (cid:1) 1.14 –3.36, for 400 vs. 280 pmol/liter) were associated with mortality from lung cancer.
Zoë Hyde et al. · The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism · 2011

Why this rating

Observational data with acknowledged limitations including potential residual confounding by smoking and small case numbers for multivariate analysis.

Source

Low Free Testosterone Predicts Mortality from Cardiovascular Disease But Not Other Causes: The Health in Men Study

Zoë Hyde et al. · The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism · 2011

DOI 10.1210/jc.2011-1617

cohort · n=3637Cited 174×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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