Review Article Partial Androgen Deficiency, Depression, and Testosterone Supplementation in Aging Men

Copyright © 2012 Mario Amore et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The aim of this review was to summarize current knowledge on the correlation between depressive symptoms with a syndrome called partial androgen deficiency of the agingmale (PADAM) and on the potential benefits of testosterone (T) treatment onmood. Despite, the causative nature of the relationship between low T levels and depression is uncertain, many hypogonadal men suffer from depression and vice versa several depressed patients are affected by hypogonadism. Supplementation with testosterone failed to show sound evidence of effectiveness in the treatment of depression. Nevertheless, testosterone supplementation has proved to be effective on some domains significant for the quality of life of aged patients with PADAM (sexual function and cognitive functions, muscular strengths). 1