For how we live.
Testosterone, prostate, fertility, and the risks men skip.
A Cochrane review of 48 trials found treatment may lift pregnancy rates from about 21% to 22–48%, but couldn't confirm a live-birth benefit. Microsurgery had the fewest recurrences.
Low testosterone is a symptom, not a diagnosis. It splits into testicular and pituitary causes — and Klinefelter syndrome, the commonest genetic cause, is found in only about a quarter of the men who have it.
Modern techniques fail less than 1% of the time. The best meta-analysis found no link to aggressive or fatal prostate cancer; a 2-million-man registry still sees a small excess, most likely from extra testing.
Exogenous testosterone switches off the body's own signals to the testes. In a male-contraceptive trial, 95.9 per 100 men fell to near-zero sperm counts. The effect is usually, but not always, reversible.
Men are under 1% of breast-cancer cases, but they present older and at higher stage, and survival has improved more slowly than in women. Care is largely borrowed from female breast cancer.
For the pelvic-pain syndrome that affects many men, Cochrane reviews find alpha-blockers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories each help only a little. Acupuncture and shockwave therapy have the firmer support.
In the 500-man PRECISION trial, MRI-guided biopsy detected clinically significant cancer in 38% of men versus 26% with the old blind biopsy — and spared 28% a biopsy altogether.
The only FDA-approved drug for the penile-curvature disorder straightens the average man's bend only modestly more than placebo. Surgery is more definitive, and most oral remedies are unsupported.
Men break fewer bones than women but die more often after a hip fracture. No major body recommends screening every man, and the US task force says the evidence is simply not there yet.
One ultrasound scan for abdominal aortic aneurysm cuts AAA-related deaths in older men who ever smoked — but not all-cause mortality. The evidence is almost entirely about men, which is why the recommendation is too.
Men die by suicide two to four times as often as women in most countries. The reasons implicate lower help-seeking and masculine norms — and the interventions tested so far have not been shown to reduce it.
Alpha-blockers ease symptoms within weeks; 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors shrink the gland over months. In a 3,047-man trial, combining them cut progression risk by 66%. Newer office procedures spare sexual function.
US men die at higher rates than women at almost every age. In younger men the gap is driven by injuries, overdose and suicide; in older men by heart disease — with delayed help-seeking a recurring thread.
Enlarged male breast gland tissue is common and usually benign. In a study of 19,640 young males, about three-quarters of cases were idiopathic and only 3.4% were linked to underlying disease.
It is the most common cancer in young men and incidence keeps climbing, but deaths are a small fraction of cases — and major guidelines advise against routine screening or self-exam in men without symptoms.