Testosterone boosts women's athletic performance, study shows

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[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's the Guardian that made things unclear, so you did not misunderstand or goof up!

In fact, now that I too have looked again and gone to the original source, it turns out I am the one who goofed up about which study that Guardian article was referring. So if anyone owes apologies, it's me! I'll try to explain:

The report of the 10-week results published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in October 2019 that the Guardian story focuses on is one of a group of studies in the same area of inquiry that researchers at the Karolinska Institut in Sweden have been conducting over the past several years - and as it turns out, I mistook the study vaguely referenced in that Guardian article for another study on much the same topic.

In work officially published in 2020, but released on a preliminary basis in late 2019, the Karolinska researchers compared the effects of taking transition-hormone treatments over the course of a year on two groups of people: TIMs brand-new to hormone treatments, and TIFs brand-new to hormone treatments. Both groups were put on the standard protocols of transgender medicine. Meaning, the TIMs were put on T-suppressants and cross-sex (female) hormones, and the TIFs were put on testosterone at doses high enough to get their circulating testosterone into the male range (which usually involves high dose injections).

This paper - "Muscle Strength, Size, and Composition Following 12 Months of Gender-affirming Treatment in Transgender Individuals" - was published in the March 2020 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, although at the time it was submitted to that journal and sent out for peer review last fall, it was made available in its original form online (on PLoS, I think).

What this paper showed is that after a year of "gender affirming" hormone treatments, TIFs gained "robust" amounts of muscle and strength, but TIMs did not lose muscle and strength at similarly significant rates. TIMs hardly lost muscle and strength at all, in fact. Here's the paper in full:

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/105/3/e805/5651219

Since the Guardian did not specify which paper from the Karolinska they were talking about, when I saw the article in the OP was dated last fall I mistakenly assumed it was part of the Karolinska study comparing TIMs and TIFs - because that's the paper that got so much attention and has such huge significance for women's sports.

But now that I've gone and looked at the British Journal of Sports Medicine, I see that the paper the Guardian was talking about is an entirely different one called "Effects of moderately increased testosterone concentration on physical performance in young women: a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study."

Unlike the other paper I confused it with, in this study the women were given T cream not shots; the study apparently did not continue past the 10 weeks; and during that time the women in the study who were put on T supplementation saw their T levels increased "from 0.9 (0.4) nmol/L to 4.3 (2.8) nmol/L" - which is nowhere near the male range for T, but - I think - is in the range of many women with PCOS.

As I cannot access the entire paper without paying a hefty fee, I can't tell what the aim of the study was, nor can I tell where the study participants stand in terms of their gender identity. It could be as you suggested that the researchers were indeed trying to mimic PCOS. And it could be all, some or none of the study participants had cross-sex gender identities - or any gender identities at all.

But it seems several of the assumptions on which I based my initial response to your comment were entirely in error. For that I sincerely apologize. I try to be very careful in my reading and writing, and usually am fairly good at it, but I'm definitely the one who goofed up here! Of course, it the Guardian had been clearer, we both would've saved a lot of time.

The abstract for the study cited in the Guardian article in the OP:

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/105/3/e805/5651219

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Pfft, we can just blame The Guardian, they'll never know. Plus, we all learned about the other study in the process.

Thank you for the clarification on the article and study, and for posting a link for the abstract!

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yes, we did learn. Amazing, innit, that we posters on this social media site have higher standards for fact-checking - and admitting our mistakes - than any reputable journalistic outfit these days, be the the Guardian, the NY TIMs [sic] or WaPo.

Thank you in turn for the cordial exchange. Now I am really curious about what the motivation was for doing the 10-week study of the effects of moderate T supplementation in females, and for participating in it. Shocking how blithe people are about taking cross-sex hormones these days. So many young TIFs - and an increasing number of non-binary females - now talk about taking T like it's aspirin, thinking wishfully that it will bring only the effects they desire, without any of the drawbacks and longterm health risks.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thanks to you as well, it's always a pleasure. I always appreciate extra citation material (and there's much that I don't understand, but I have a love affair with medical research).

I would be willing to bet that so much of what's reported to us as news is just simply someone skimming information and shitting out whatever they can on a deadline to get paid. It concerns me a little as to how much it can spread into popular medical journalism.

As far as recreational test goes, it's possible that it's being pushed with all the fancy snake oil phrasings to normalize it- like you were saying, aspirin. I was reading about TIFs the other day in a comparison between them, perimenopausal and menopausal women. High T treatment over time completely depletes glycogen stores in the vaginal epithelium and makes the walls thin as fuck. It leaves it at risk for damage and screws up the vaginal flora. Are yeast and BV common for Transmen? https://www.nature.com/articles/ijir20139 Anyhow, I digressed a bit there.

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Dunno if yeast and BV are common for TIFs on T, but vaginal atrophy and excruciating pelvic pain after orgasm (and sometimes round the clock) certainly are: https://www.transgendertrend.com/severe-pain-orgasm-effect-testosterone-female-body/

https://youtu.be/ZhDnKSru6jE

If these relatively young(er) people had ever bothered to look at the issues with vaginal atrophy, pelvic organ prolapse, chronic UTIs, pelvic pain/neuralgia, etc that post-menopausal and especially elderly women have long experienced - and have fruitlessly sought help for over the course of many decades - due to low/lack of estrogen, their own awful experiences being on T from an early age would not be such a big surprise. But who cares about older women? Women who've lived 60, 70, 80+ years in female bodies - what could they possibly know?