We now know that the COVID-19 virus causes what the medical field calls a “cytokine storm” in your body. An inflammatory cytokine, or pro-inflammatory cytokine, is a type of signaling molecule that is secreted from immune cells like helper T cells, macrophages, and certain other cell types that promote inflammation. Pro-inflammatory cytokines have a central role in the progression of COVID-19 infection. Reduction of cytokine activity and/or their receptors (anti-cytokine therapy), can be useful for treatment.
Several studies now show that hypogonadism (low testosterone) is associated with increased pro-inflammatory cytokines. In this context, measuring testosterone levels may be recommended at the time of an identified COVID-19 positive test. Furthermore, the use of testosterone may be considered to reduce the associated pulmonary syndrome, thus preventing progression to severe COVID-19 disease where pro-inflammatory cytokines play a major role.
For those of you that don’t know,PubMed Central (PMC) is a highly reputable resource at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) supporting the search and retrieval of peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally. The PubMed database contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts of peer-reviewed biomedical literature.
For the Pubmed Covid & Testosterone article – Click here
Stars and Stripes is a daily American military newspaper reporting on matters concerning the members of the United States Armed Forces and their communities, with an emphasis on those serving outside the United States.
For the Stars & Stripes Covid & Testosterone article – Click here
After reading this Pubmed and Stars and Stripes article, if you’ve been sitting on the fence or have mixed feelings about testosterone therapy, now it’s definitely an excellent time to, or at the very least, get your testosterone levels checked