Testosterone exerts complex effects on the cardiovascular system, with low levels being common in men with dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure and associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes.
This review highlights the complex role of testosterone in cardiovascular health, where low levels correlate with worse heart failure outcomes, but its role in cardiomyopathies like myocarditis varies by sex and disease stage.
Testosterone exerts an important regulation of cardiovascular function through genomic and nongenomic pathways. It produces several changes in cardiomyocytes, the main actor of cardiomyopathies, which are characterized by pathological remodeling, eventually leading to heart failure. Testosterone is involved in contractility, in the energy metabolism of myocardial cells, apoptosis, and the remodeling process. In myocarditis, testosterone directly promotes the type of inflammation that leads to fibrosis, and influences viremia with virus localization. At the same time, testosterone exerts cardioprotective effects that have been observed in different studies. There is increasing evidence that low endogenous levels of testosterone have a negative impact in some cardiomyopathies and a protective impact in others. This review focuses on the interrelationships between testosterone and cardiomyopathies and heart failure.
Diaconu et al. (Mon,) conducted a review in Cardiomyopathies and heart failure. Testosterone was evaluated. Testosterone exerts complex effects on the cardiovascular system, with low levels being common in men with dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure and associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes.