Wednesday - September 27, 2006

You Don’t Say?

You ladies out there may feel free to run with this one. We testosterone-fueled humans of the male gender will simply have to admit defeat as science has now determined we are brain-dead. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. Must have been some more brain cells dying off ....

Too Much Testosterone Kills Brain Cells
_{WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 3:23 p.m. EDT, September 27, 2006}

Too much testosterone can kill brain cells, researchers say, in a finding that may help explain why steroid abuse can cause behavior changes such as aggressiveness and suicidal tendencies. Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.

“Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect,” said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study. Testosterone is key to the development, differentiation and growth of cells and is produced by both men and women, although men produce about 20 times more of the hormone.

It can also be abused, and recent scandals have involved athletes who use the hormone, or steroids that turn into testosterone in the body, for an unfair advantage. “Other people have shown that high levels of steroid can cause behavioral changes,” Ehrlich said in a telephone interview.

“We can show that when you have high levels of steroids, you have high testosterone and that can destroy the nerve cells. We know that when you lose brain cells you lose function.” Ehrlich’s team tried the same thing with the “female” hormone estrogen, just to be fair.

“We were surprised, but it actually looks like estrogen is neuroprotective. If anything, there is less cell death in the presence of estrogen,” she said. Writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Ehrlich and colleagues said their findings meant people should think twice about supplementing with testosterone, even if it does build muscle mass and aid recovery after exercise.

“These effects of testosterone on neurons will have long-term effects on brain function,” they wrote. “Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don’t get mad—just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault,” Ehrlich said in a statement.

The cells die via a process called apoptosis, also known as cell suicide or programmed cell death. “Apoptosis is an important thing for the brain—the brain needs to weed out some of the cells. But when it happens too frequently, you lose too many cells and causes problems.”

A similar process is seen in Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia in the United States, affecting an estimated 4.5 million Americans, and Huntington’s disease, another fatal brain illness. “Our results suggest that the responses to elevated testosterone can be compared with these pathophysiological conditions,” the researchers wrote.

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/27/2006 at 09:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Medical •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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