Association of plasma total testosterone level and metabolic syndrome in adult males

Introduction: Low testosterone level has strongly been correlated with body fat accumulation and abdominal obesity in men. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate testosterone level in men with and without metabolic syndrome to determine the relationship between testosterone and metabolic syndrome. Patients and Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 172 cases of metabolic syndrome and 172 participants as a control group in Rasoul Akram hospital, Tehran, Iran. Demographic characteristics, fasting blood sugar (FBS), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), cholesterol, triglyceride (TG), and testosterone levels were recorded. SPSS version 21.0 and SAS version 9.1 were used for statistical analysis. Level of significance was considered 0.05. Results: The mean age of the two groups were 45.1±9.3 years and 41.5 ±11.2 years, respectively. There was a significant difference in serum testosterone levels between both groups and low testosterone levels were associated with metabolic syndrome (P<0.001). Serum testosterone levels showed a significant negative correlation with age in the metabolic syndrome group (r= -0.16, P=0.02). The relationship between metabolic syndrome and total plasma testosterone level using logistic regression model showed that, by increasing the total plasma testosterone level, the odds ratio for metabolic syndrome was 0.076 (95% CI: 0.027-0.216; P< 0.001). Conclusion: According to the results, low level of testosterone was related to the presence of metabolic syndrome in adult males. Future studies can investigate diagnostic value of testosterone level in this syndrome.