Preclinical study demonstrates that bilateral orchiectomy reduces lean mass and bone density in obese macaques, highlighting its value as a model for sarcopenic obesity.
Obesity is a leading cause of secondary hypogonadism or low testosterone. Conversely, hypogonadism frequently leads to excess body fat/obesity demonstrating a potentially reciprocal relationship between the two. This study describes the impact of bilateral orchiectomy (ORX) in a colony of diet-induced obese (DIO) male Mauritius cynomolgus macaques (DIO-CM) maintained on a Western Style Diet (WSD). Body composition analysis via dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) was performed prior and up to 15 months post-surgery to determine the long-term changes in hypogonadism. As expected, ORX significantly reduced testosterone, inhibin B, and estrogen while increasing FSH and LH throughout the entire follow up period. Animals lost significant body weight mainly due to a loss of lean but not fat mass. ORX had detrimental and long-lasting, 15 months post-surgery, effects on bone, including decreased total bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD), with the most drastic losses localized to the pelvic region. Additionally, animals demonstrated a transient elevation of numerous bone turnover markers. This model demonstrates that in a phenotypically well-characterized colony of DIO-CM, hypogonadism induces lean mass loss, increased body fat percentage, and numerous hallmarks of osteoporosis. This nonhuman primate model is relevant to human bone biology, age-related body composition changes such as sarcopenic obesity, and hypogonadism and therefore could be utilized to test muscle and bone mass preserving interventions in the future.
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Kirigiti et al. (2026) studied this question.
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