Poor levels of agreement between serum and saliva testosterone measurement following exercise training in aging men

Abstract

Testosterone (T) is a biologically important androgen that demonstrates a widely-known natural decline with advancing age. The use of salivary T (sal-T), as a determinant of systemic T, has shown promising results in recent years. However, the strength of the salivary-serum T relationship may be affected by measurement method and binding capacity with salivary proteins. The potential influence exercise may impact on this relationship is unstudied in aging men. Therefore, the aim of the present investigation was to examine the relationship of the delta change (Δ) in sal-T with Δserum T following six weeks exercise training. Fifteen sedentary (SED) males (aged 60.4±5.0 years of age) and 20 lifelong exercising (LE) males (60.4±4.7 years of age) were participated. Pearson's correlation coefficient revealed sal-T did not correlate with total testosterone (TT), sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG), bioactive T (bio-T), or free T (free-T) at week 0 or week 6. Δsal-T did not correlate with ΔTT, ΔSHBG, Δbio-T or Δfree-T (r=0.271, p=0.180; r=0.197, p=0.335; r=0.258, p=0.205; and r=0.257, p=0.205, respectively). In conclusion, poor levels of agreement existed between saliva and serum measurements of T in response to exercise amongst aging men.