Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and objectives: Transsexuality refers to discrepancy between the assigned sex/gender at birth and the one that the subject identifies with. The use of the cross hormone treatment as sex/gender change method implies the necessity of monitorize the hormone levels and potential treatment risks. Our study tries to evaluate the relationship between the hormone changes and the changes in the cardiovascular risk factors and the bone mineral density.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of 25 transsexual subjects (nine transsexual women (36%) and 16 transsexual men (64%)) receiving cross hormone treatment for 24 months and monitoring in Hospital Clínico San Carlos. Demographic information, cardiovascular risk factors and bone mineral data were collected.

Results: 25 patients were evaluated with a mean of age of 37.8±10.3 for transsexual women and 34.13±10.6 for transsexual men (P=0.39). 33% of transsexual women and 13% of men were smokers (P<0.01). Mean of spine T-score for transsexual women was 1.06±0.18 and 0.83±0.33 for men (P<0.05). No other cardiovascular risk factors were found nor differences between both groups. During the 24 month follow-up, no worsening of cardiovascular risk factors was found in both groups. According to the transsexual women it was found a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (SBP) (117 mmHg±9.12 mmHg vs 112.2 mmHg±12.1 mmHg (P=0.04)). On the other hand, it was identified a positive correlation between testosterone levels and first, total cholesterol (r=0.69, P<0.04) and second, LDL-c (r=0.73, P<0.02), showing that the higher testosterone levels, the higher cholesterol ones. No differences in terms of bone mineral density were found in any of the groups.

Conclusions: According to our results, the cross hormone treatment is safe in terms of no worsening cardiovascular risk factors and bone mineral density. In order to avoid long term worsening in both aspects it is very important to maintain de estradiol and testosterone levels in the correct range and try to look carefully the cardiovascular risk factors.