Martin M. Miner, MD

Mark A. Moyad, MD, MPH, the Jenkins/Pokempner Director of Preventive/Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) at the University of Michigan Medical Center in the Department of Urology in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Martin M. Miner, MD, Co-Director of the Men’s Health Center and Chief of Family and Community Medicine for Miriam Hospital, and Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Urology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, investigate the ways in which body mass index (BMI) correlates with testosterone levels and how this knowledge can be used in a medical setting. Dr. Moyad begins the discussion with Dr. Miner’s presentation on the possibility of testosterone needs increasing as BMI increases, wherein Dr. Miner found that obese men required higher doses of testosterone to reach eugonadal levels than men who were not obese. Dr. Miner states that he expects the results of a long-term safety study of testosterone will soon show that testosterone therapy is safe over the long term, allowing physicians and researchers to focus on the symptomatic benefit of testosterone in areas such as mood and cardiovascular risk. Dr. Moyad asks if weight loss and increased fitness could possibly reduce the need for testosterone therapy, to which Dr. Miner responds that it may be possible if both weight loss and a reduction in comorbidities occur but it is unlikely in patients over 60. They conclude that weight loss can help make testosterone therapy more effective but it is unclear if it would be enough to reduce testosterone therapy altogether because of a multitude of genetic variables.