Higher serum total testosterone levels correlate with increased risk of depressive symptoms in Caucasian women through the entire menopausal transition

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Is Associated With Adverse Mental Health and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes

“…However, the relationship between androgen levels and affective 316 symptoms may not be so clear-cut since others have shown an association of lower testosterone 317 and androgen metabolite concentrations with worse self-reported depression symptoms in women with PCOS (35). Increased changes in testosterone concentrations across the perimenopause have also been associated with depression (36,37). Fertility may be another major concern for women with PCOS, although depression and anxiety scores remain higher than controls in studies where this has been accounted for (32,38).…”

Testosterone is related to GABA+ levels in the posterior-cingulate in unmedicated depressed women during reproductive life

“…Due to the observation that estradiol fluctuations are related to depressive episodes but also to vulnerability to stress (Freeman et al, 2006; Gordon et al, 2016), some authors have suggested that the effect of testosterone may be due to the conversion of testosterone to estradiol via aromatase. However, some studies have observed a relationship between T and depressive symptoms, and no such relationship for estradiol (Giltay et al, 2012; Milman et al, 2015; Bromberger et al, 2010; Kische et al, 2017). Our results concur with this observation, since we did not observe a significant correlation between estradiol levels and GABA+ concentrations in the explored brain regions, suggesting that anxiolytic and antidepressant effects of T are not related to estradiol conversion, or perhaps indicating a preponderant role of testosterone in GABAergic modulation.…”

“…Reproductive life stage could influence the relationship between testosterone and mood in the menopausal transition, an increased risk of depressive symptoms was related to higher levels of T in Caucasian, but not in African-American women (Milman et al, 2015). Similarly, a follow-up study observed that an increase in T levels was associated to an increased risk of depressive symptoms (Bromberger et al, 2010).…”

Evaluation of hormonal and metabolic factors related to depression in reproductive age women

“…Likewise, a recent clinical study found decreased testosterone levels in both men and women with major depression compared to healthy participants (Asadikaram et al, 2019). Although most studies agree that low testosterone levels in men are related to depression (Ford et al, 2016;Kische et al, 2018;Zarrouf, Artz, Griffith, Sirbu, & Kommor, 2009), findings for women are inconsistent (Kische et al, 2018;Milman, Sammel, Barnhart, Freeman, & Dokras, 2015) and appear to depend on the woman's reproductive stage (Fiacco, Walther, & Ehlert, 2019). In women in transition to menopause, it has been observed that high testosterone levels may be related to MDD (Bromberger & Epperson, 2018); whereas in young women, no differences are observed in testos-terone levels between depressed patients and healthy controls (Matsuzaka et al, 2013) or both high and low levels are reported in young women with depression (Walther, Wasielewska, & Leiter, 2019;Weber, Lewicka, Deuschle, Colla, & Heuser, 2000).…”