Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH)

[EnnNafnlaus]

I was just reading some articles the other day and something hit me. Since googling turned up no results, I thought I'd ask here:

Has anyone ever heard of attempts to use Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) in FTM hormone treatment?

Most of the research out there on AMH relates to fertility treatment. The standard adult female levels are generally below 4 ng/ml; higher is generally a sign of PCOS, while low levels mean low fertiliy. Greater than 4ng/ml is considered "high", and greater than 10 "ultrahigh", with strong correlations to high testosterone levels and amenorrhea. But those sort of levels are nothing. Boys at ages 2-12 typically have AMH levels of 7 to 240 ng/ml. From birth to age 2, boys usually have even more, 15-500 ng/ml. And it's probably even higher still in the womb. Because AMH, together with testosterone, plays a critical role: it's what in boys causes the müllerian duct (the upper vagina, uterus, and fallopean tubes) to regress to a tiny vestigal feature (the "vagina masculina" or "prostatic utricle"), and causes the development of the Wolffian duct into the epididymis, the vas deferens, seminal vesicle, and the prostate.

Has anyone ever actually tried giving AMH to an adult transman in these sort of quantites (enough to raise blood levels to over 100 times higher than normal, aka, up to male fetal levels)?  It seems unthinkable to me that nobody would ever have tried it, but I've tried googling and googling and I can't find any evidence that anyone has ever attempted it.

[Dena]

Welcome to Susan's Place. Most likely not. Many things happen in the womb and can't be altered after birth and I would suspect most of those changes would have taken place by the time of birth. If they hadn't, the child might come under the header of intersex. We are given sex hormones because they really don't come into play until puberty and while they may have a lesser effect on older people, they still can cause changes at most any age.

[EnnNafnlaus]

Indeed, there is no guarantee that something that can be altered during fetal development can be altered during adulthood. Some tissues can. Others can't. But without trying it, there is no way to know. That's why I'm quite curious as to whether there've ever been any attempts. AMH's effects on a fetus are just as critical as testosterone's.

[Dena]

Such an experiment would be done on lab animals first and it may have already been tried. We have standards of care just like any other medical condition and to test something like that on a human without testing it on lab animals could be dangerous or inhuman.

I would suspect is has been tried on lab animals and that is why it was never attempted on humans.

[iKate]

Such an experiment would be done on lab animals first and it may have already been tried. We have standards of care just like any other medical condition and to test something like that on a human without testing it on lab animals could be dangerous or inhuman.

I would suspect is has been tried on lab animals and that is why it was never attempted on humans.

Is it? As far as I know, MTF/FTM hormone therapy wasn't tried on animals first.

[EnnNafnlaus]

I would suspect is has been tried on lab animals and that is why it was never attempted on humans.

Again, I can't find any evidence that it's ever been tried on lab animals, either. I spent a couple hours and couldn't find evidence that it's ever been tried on anyone, of any species. Small doses, yes (which do have a number of effects, including elevating testosterone levels and the cessation of periods). But nothing like bringing them up to male fetal levels.

AMH is an important male hormone that occurs in only tiny quantities in women. It just seems strange that there appears to have never been even a thought to including it in FTM hormonal regimes.