Testosterone Supplementation May Cause… Fracture?!

Randomized trial data suggests that the medication, which strengthens bones, increases the risk that they will break.

Here is a graph without any labels.

What could this line represent? Maybe it’s the stock price of some company that made a big splash but failed to live up to expectations. Maybe it’s an outbreak curve — charting the introduction of a new infectious agent to a population. Maybe it’s the performance of a particularly viral tweet?

I’ll tell you what it is in a moment, but I wanted you to recognize that there is something inherently wistful in this shape — something that speaks of past glory and inevitable declines. It’s a graph that induces a feeling of resistance — no — do not go gently into that goodnight.

What the graph actually represents, roughly, is the normal level of serum testosterone in otherwise healthy men as they age.