Topic: T and the immune system

[Cormorant]

I've heard testosterone might weaken your immune system/people with higher T levels have a weaker immune response. The only reference I can find is one study in 2014 though, so I'm not 100% sure about that scientifically.

I'm currently fighting off our most recent plague, so it's been on my mind. I feel like I've gotten sick more often since starting T, but that might just be because I've been paying more attention to how I feel in general.

As an open Q, since going on T or T-blockers, does it seem that how often/badly you've gotten sick has changed?

[Confused1]

This is just my experience, YMMV. I had a Lupron shot to shut down testosterone in March of this year. My wife and I had the COVID together. I was a little worse than her, but not much worse than the normal flu. Have not had one day sick other than that.

Hugs,
Mike

[Rakel]

Testosterone definitely does NOT weaken your immune system.

Young men are the healthiest people here. As a group, they need far fewer hospitalizations due to infections than children or the elderly, of which, both groups having far less Testosterone than young men.

If you are injecting Testosterone and having recurrent infections, your sterile technique may need improving.

[Battle Goddess]

Rakel, couldn't there be confounding variables?

Like, maybe it isn't the T so much as that they're young people in the prime of life?

Just speculating, but that's the statistician in me talking. You know much more about these things than I.

[SarahEL]

It is one of those self-fulfilling prophecies.. you test people's T level, and look at their rates of sickness..
By doing that test your are infering a correlation between cause (T-level) and effect (sickness levels) without having first proved that a viable link exists..
And any study done like that would show, those with higher T levels (who would be generally healthier anyway) would have less sickness... For the same reasoning, I would doubt a peer reviewed scientific paper would show the opposite either.. The basis of testing is flawed at the onset..

In the paper Associations between male testosterone and immune function in a pathogenically stressed forager-horticultural population
Benjamin C Trumble,  (cannot link not allowed)..

It discusses

..Endogenous testosterone appears to be immunomodulatory rather than immunosuppressive. Potentially costlier forms of immune activation like those induced by PHA (largely T-cell biased immune activation) are down-regulated in men with higher testosterone, but testosterone has less impact on potentially less costly immune activation following LPS stimulation (largely B-cell mediated immunity).

WhichI roughly  translate into, it does not have much downward effect that is damaging and it is reproductively advantageous in the population overall.. But then I am no doctor... so best ask your endocrinologist.....

[Battle Goddess]

... best ask your endocrinologist.

If I know mine, he'll laugh at me and ask why I want to know, seeing as I'm committed to purging the filthy stuff from my body in the first place.