Shocking testosterone fact comes to light

For more than 80 years, men have been told that testosterone helps prostate cancer grow.

But a very different perspective has come to light over the past two decades.

The prostate is a small gland that is located below the bladder. Its job is to produce the fluid that helps transport sperm, and it relies heavily on testosterone to do so.

All prostate cells, whether healthy or cancerous, contain androgen receptors. These are the molecular switches that initiate testosterone’s action inside cells. When testosterone binds to these receptors, it helps the prostate grow and function normally.

This close hormonal control is important, but it also sets the stage for one of the most enduring assumptions in men’s health: because testosterone stimulates normal prostate growth, it must also stimulate cancer growth.

Nobel prize-winning research of Charles Huggins in the 1940s established this belief through his research, that prostate cancer shrank when testosterone levels were lowered and accelerated when testosterone was added, via injections.

Lowering testosterone levels, known as androgen deprivation therapy, became the standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer. It still is. Removing testosterone often shrinks tumours, slows disease progression and improves survival.

Even more surprisingly, doctors are testing a new approach in certain men with prostate cancer called bipolar androgen therapy, which switches testosterone levels between very low and very high.

The technique uses testosterone itself as a weapon to confuse and kill cancer cells that have learned to survive without it.

This is one of the most striking reversals in modern cancer treatment. Testosterone has shifted from a presumed villain feared to ignite prostate cancer, to a possible hormone ally.