SAT-LB5 Prevalence of Hypogonadism in Young Obese Males

Abstract

Ageing, obesity, and chronic illness are major factors affecting serum testosterone (T) levels in men.The magnitude of the impact of ageing on serum T levels is well established, for obesity this is less clear. Severe obesity may lead to isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (IHH). Several explanations have been offered to clarify the presence of reduced T levels in obese men. One relates to the technique that is generally employed to measure serum androgen levels, i.e. measurement of total testosterone (TT) instead of free testosterone (FT). TT represents the sum of FT and T bound to albumin and sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG). A profound reduction in SHBG level is commonly found in obese men, and this is a major factor causing a decrease in TT.Measurement of free testosterone levels may provide a more accurate assessment of androgen status than the (usually preferred) measurement of total testosterone in situations where SHBG levels are outside the reference range. However, reference ranges for free testosterone levels are not well established, especially in older men, and some have argued that the measurement of free testosterone levels merely reintroduces age in a covert form. This is a cross sectional study to estimate prevalence of hypogonadism in young obese males. In this study 147 young obese men participated, of which we confirmed low total testosterone (TT) levels in 35.37% of subjects with a p value of 0.06. Since only Total Testosterone was measured for categorizing subjects with or without hypogonadism, Free Testosterone measurement would be a better indicator for the diagnosis of hypogonadism as in cases where the total testosterone is borderline-low or when SHBG concentrations are abnormal. As such, the study is valuable in the context of the ongoing controversy as to whether testosterone treatment should be limited to men with classical hypogonadism, or be considered for appropriately selected men with functional hypogonadism as well. The principal findings are in general agreement with existing literature reporting correlation between levels of testosterone, body mass index and constitutional symptoms. However, this has never been shown before in context of Indian population. The present study was carried out at Armed Forces Medical College and Command Hospital, Pune between October 2017 to August 2019.We studied to see if there is association between testosterone levels and BMI. In our study we found no statistical association as the p value was 0.26 (>0.05)