Androgens and Cardiovascular Disease

Globally, cardiovascular disease will continue causing most human deaths for the foreseeable future. The consistent gender gap in life span of approximately 5.6 yr in all advanced economies must derive from gender differences in age-specific cardiovascular death rates, which rise steeply in parallel for both genders but 5-10 yr earlier in men. The lack of inflection point at modal age of menopause, contrasting with unequivocally estrogen-dependent biological markers like breast cancer or bone density, makes estrogen protection of premenopausal women an unlikely explanation. Limited human data suggest that testosterone exposure does not shorten life span in either gender, and oral estrogen treatment increases…