This makes your blood thicker than it should be, and it could increase your risk for blood clots. Rarely, some people feel a little faint or lightheaded after a blood draw. These can be signs of many health conditions, including infections, cancer, blood conditions and medication side effects.
C) PBMCs from healthy men and women sorted based on canonical surface markers and subject to bulk mRNA-sequencing and expression nTPM (normalized Transcripts per million bases) for the indicated sex hormone receptor mRNA in three female and three male donors combined. B) Flow cytometry analysis of AR and pan-ESR in the indicated cell populations. A) Flow cytometry analysis of intracellular staining of the androgen receptor, AR in the indicated cell populations. I) Five healthy female donors, pretreated with DHT, DHT + AR inhib. P-values from Kruskal-Wallis tests (5% FDR corrected) b) Testosterone and estradiol levels in patients receiving full dose (1000 mg, black) or reduced doses (750 mg, orange) of Nebido at one or more timepoints. Sc-mRNA-seq, Nanostring data and NicheNet analyses by R.F. Clinical enrolment and data collection was performed by P.D., J. Wahlberg, A. Hagelin, M.H., M.D.
IRF7 is a master regulator of IFN-I responses in pDCs15 and individuals with loss of function mutations in IRF7 fail to control respiratory viruses such as influenza16 and SARS-CoV-2 (ref. 17). This corroborates a recent report of pDC responses in six trans men14. PDCs are efficient producers of IFN-I, and their contraction can contribute to the reduction in Hallmark IFNα transcripts by testosterone (Fig. 1f). Kruskal–Wallis tests (5% false discovery rate (FDR) corrected) for bioavailable testosterone (b), oestradiol (c) and progesterone (d). Five individuals received lower doses (Nebido, 750 mg) due to low body mass indices but their plasma hormone concentrations were comparable (Extended Data Fig. 1b). It is important to understand how GAHT influences the immune response in these individuals, but this also provides a unique opportunity to investigate the immunomodulatory functions of gonadal steroids in vivo in humans of reproductive age. Gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) enables the acquisition of secondary sex characteristics better aligned with gender identity in transgender individuals.
Using mixed-effects models with age and study visit as fixed effects and participant as a random effect, we identified changes in several immune cell populations when comparing samples before and during testosterone treatment. We stabilized whole blood cells directly at blood collection, stained with a 50-parameter antibody panel and acquired 12,377,068 cells by mass cytometry. Blood samples were collected at baseline and following 3 and 12 months of testosterone treatment (Fig. 1a). Conversely, testosterone potentiates monocyte responses leading to increased tumour necrosis factor, interleukin-6 and interleukin-15 production and downstream activation of nuclear factor kappa B-regulated genes and potentiation of interferon-γ responses, primarily in natural killer cells. Excessively high hemoglobin/hematocrit can thicken the blood and increase the risk of clotting events.
The absolute lymphocyte count did not change significantly from baseline across dose groups. The baseline characteristics of study participants were summarized as mean and standard deviations or median and interquartile ranges for normally and non-normally distributed data, respectively. These findings were verified in another trial in which testosterone treatment was administered to functionally-limited older men23.