What is the average testosterone level by age

Men over 45 can be tested until p. Risks associated with the blood test are rare but may include bleeding, pain at the injection site, or infection.

While symptoms of lowering testosterone may be a normal part of aging, they could also be signs of other underlying factors. These include:. If your testosterone level is too low, your doctor may suggest TRT. Testosterone is available as:. Some medications used to treat high testosterone levels in women include:.

However, a gradual decrease is a normal part of aging. If you suspect you have low testosterone, you may wonder if your diet can help. We explore ways to boost low testosterone, especially through food…. Testosterone helps maintain muscle mass, bone density, and sex drive. Get tips for boosting T naturally through sleep, weight loss, exercise, and more. Take a close look at how testosterone plays a crucial role in keeping your body healthy, as well as how you can increase your testosterone level….

It's common to lose interest in sexual activity from time to time, and your libido levels can vary throughout your life.

Certain underlying conditions…. Just as women go through menopause, men experience a decrease in testosterone with age. Because testosterone affects so many functions, its decrease…. Too much or too little testosterone can affect a woman's overall health. Here's what the cause might be and how to treat it. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Multiple Sclerosis. Testosterone Levels by Age. However they report geometric means as opposed to arithmetic means and do not report the sample size for each calculation, so a detailed comparison of their results to ours is not possible.

Muller et al. Frost et al. Rhoden et al. Taken together, these studies provide partial qualitative external validation for our model, but do not completely resolve the issue of contradictory single-centre study outcomes.

Our model is derived from data from multiple sources of the measurement of TT in over 10, healthy males aged between 3 and years. This is both a strength and weakness of the study. The strength is that modelling power is increased by the provision of large numbers of datapoints for a wide range of ages: it has been previously shown that models that include both prepubertal, pubertal and adult ages can be used to derive important insights for a restricted age range [47].

The weakness is the approximate heterogeneity of the values obtained from diverse sources, especially as assay conversion factors were used that have known high correlation but are nevertheless inexact. This includes studies that involve convenience samples e. Further limitations of our approach are that insufficient data were found to model accurately neonatal ages, and that we had to exclude potentially useful studies that used in-house assays which lack standardisation and harmonisation, and for which no conversion formula has been published [48].

We can therefore not rule out the possibility that a small number of subjects were on medication that increased their TT levels. Our results suggest that the reported increase in the proportion of hypogonadal men with increasing age can be attributed to the increase in variance of testosterone levels with increasing age, as opposed to an age-related decline in testosterone levels for the population as a whole.

These assertions are incorrect since it is not possible to have more than 2. However, if the definition of hypogonadism is based on a TT level lower than a fixed value, then the prevalence of hypogonadism will indeed increase due to increased variance with advancing age.

As shown above, the majority of cross-sectional studies either report no decline in the average case, or a moderate annual decline in testosterone levels. Again, the disparity between the common explanation given and the data in the literature is that a greater proportion of individuals have lower levels of testosterone with increasing age. There is disagreement on the indications for the use of hormonal therapy in men with apparently age-related low testosterone concentrations [51] , [52].

Our analysis of the combined data from several studies agrees to a certain extent with both sides of the controversy. We find no evidence that TT declines in the average case after the age of 40 years for ageing males. We do find that the prevalence of higher and lower testosterone levels increases with age, and hence that there is a larger number of men potentially at risk of androgen-related disorders.

Our study shows that the increasing proportion of men commonly regarded as having abnormally low or high levels of TT can be accounted for by the increase in variance in testosterone levels with age. Factors that have been identfied as determinants of lower testosterone include obesity in many studies, as well as the development of other co-morbidities [53] — [55].

Obesity was not an exclusion criteria for our data acquistion, and our age-related reference ranges can be used for quantitative evaluation of the relationship between high body-mass index and low testosterone.

There is increasing concern over testosterone supplementation in men, both generally and more particulary in those with comorbidities [20] , [21]. Whether all or subgroups of older hypogonadal men might benefit from replacement requires critical assessment, for which a robustly-established normal range provides an important basis. This analysis also highlights the increasing proportion of men with high testosterone with increasing age.

This intriguing finding is both at odds with the notion of an age-related fall in the general case, and may be relevant to diseases more prevalent in this age group. For example, a recent study has shown an association in older men between high testosterone and increased all-cause mortality when compared to those with mid-range testosterone levels [56] , although causality or indeed reverse causality are not established.

In conclusion, This model provides the reference ranges needed to support research and clinical decision making in males who have symptoms that may be due to hypogonadism. In addition, our study suggests that instead of a gradual decline in testosterone levels in men as they age there is an increasing variation in testosterone levels in aged men with a larger population of hypogonadal males, who may benefit from testosterone therapy, but also more men with high serum total testosterone that may also be disadvantageous [56].

Figure S1a. Model residuals for ages 3 through 11 years. Figure S1b. Model residuals for ages 20 through 29 years. Figure S1c. Model residuals for ages 30 through 39 years. Figure S1d. Model residuals for ages 40 through 49 years. Figure S1e. Model residuals for ages 50 through 59 years. Figure S1f. Model residuals for ages 60 through 69 years. Figure S1g. Model residuals for ages 70 through 79 years. Figure S1h. Model residuals for ages 80 through 89 years. Model validation. An exemplar of the 5-fold cross validation analysis is given as Figure 3 of the main text; this figure shows the remaining four cases.

An optimal number of model parameters is seven in all cases. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. PLoS One. Published online Oct 8. Thomas W. Kelsey , 1 Lucy Q. Mitchell , 3 , 4 Ashley Whelan , 2 Richard A. Anderson , 4 and W. Hamish B. Lucy Q. Rod T. Richard A. Bin He, Editor. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Received Apr 29; Accepted Sep 3. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. This article has been corrected. See PLoS One. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Figure S2: Model validation.

Table S1: TableCurve inputs and output for the validated model. Abstract The diagnosis of hypogonadism in human males includes identification of low serum testosterone levels, and hence there is an underlying assumption that normal ranges of testosterone for the healthy population are known for all ages.

Introduction In the male, testosterone secretion from the Leydig cells in the testes has a central role in developing secondary sexual characteristics, supporting spermatogenesis and regulating libido [1]. Methods Data acquisition Using an established methodology [22] — [24] , studies containing TT measurements of healthy human males at a known age were identified by performing Medline and Embase searches, using the search terms Humans, Testosterone, Males and Reference values.

Table 1 Total testosterone data summary. Open in a separate window. The 13 papers listed were used as data sources, identified by reference number and first author. Median and range of ages are in years. What are typical testosterone levels? In this article we discuss how much testosterone is needed for you to stay healthy, how your testosterone levels change as you get older, and how you can tell if your levels are low.

Testosterone levels are determined through a blood test, as testosterone uses the blood stream to travel around your body. The amount of testosterone in your blood is measured in several different ways. You can see that it allows for a lot of variation! Interestingly, your testosterone levels change a lot over the course of the day.

Your testosterone levels peak in your late teens, around 17—19 years old. However, your levels generally stay high for the next couple of decades. Healthy young men produce about 6mg of testosterone every day.

Here are the results of one endocrinology study , demonstrating how testosterone levels decline in healthy men after the age of 40 figures are for total testosterone in the body :. So, you can see that older men may have lower testosterone levels than the average for men as a whole, while still being in good health overall. As testosterone is essential for your fertility, energy levels, and muscle and bone strength, low-T can impact these areas of your health.

If you are experiencing some of these symptoms, you can always visit your GP and ask to have your testosterone levels checked. They will consult with you about your symptoms and may recommend a blood test.

Your doctor will consider whether or not your testosterone levels meet the threshold to need treatment, based on two morning fasting blood tests — plus a physical assessment and symptom check. Your doctor might recommend making changes here, to see if that improves your symptoms, before suggesting treatment for low testosterone. Testosterone levels can also be affected by underlying health conditions such as diabetes, liver disease, or kidney disease. TRT involves delivering extra testosterone to your body so that your levels of the hormone can recover, causing your symptoms to ease.