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A Pilot Study Assessing the Impact of Heat on the Transdermal Delivery of Testosterone
Author(s) -
Shomaker T Samuel,
Zhang Jie,
Ashburn Michael A.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
the journal of clinical pharmacology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.92
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1552-4604
pISSN - 0091-2700
DOI - 10.1177/00912700122010447
Subject(s) - transdermal , testosterone (patch) , transdermal patch , medicine , endocrinology , absorption (acoustics) , chemistry , pharmacology , materials science , composite material
This study evaluated the effect of locally applied heat on the transdermal delivery of testosterone. Six healthy adult volunteers were tested three times while receiving a 5 mg androgen patch, the same patch with a heat‐generating patch, and no patch at all over 12 hours. Statistically significant differences in mean maximum serum testosterone concentration values were seen. Heat plus patch resulted in a mean maximum serum testosterone concentration of 939 ng/dl versus 635 ng/dl (patch only) and 425 ng/dl (no patch). (Heat + patch vs. no patch: p < 0.001; heat + patch vs. patch: p < 0.001; patch vs. no patch: p = 0.003.) The area under the curve of plasma testosterone concentration versus time values were means of 4114 ng/dl·h versus 1985 ng/dl·h for the patch‐only group (p = 0.001). The use of heat improved absorption of transdermal testosterone and decreased time to peak serum testosterone concentrations, resulting in a statistically significant difference in mean maximum serum testosterone concentrations compared with the use of the patch without heat.