Sex Hormone Profiles in Spinal Cord-Injured Patients

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: It is known that spinal cord injury (SCI) in adult men may result in sex hormonal changes. To investigate this change, we compared sex hormone levels of male SCI patients, uninjured normal, and infertile subjects. METHOD: Serum levels of follicular-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin, testosterone were determined in 67 male SCI patients, 20 uninjured normal men and 39 idiopathic infertile men. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures were performed with a significance level of 0.05. RESULTS: Compared with normal and infertile control groups, SCI patients had lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of prolactin. FSH levels of SCI patients were only lower than those of infertile controls. LH levels of SCI patients showed no significant difference. Compared with hormone levels of acute SCI patients, those of chronic SCI patients showed a tendency to increase in FSH, LH and testosterone, and a tendency to decrease in prolactin. Etiology of injury, completeness of injury and voiding method for neurogenic bladder did not influence the sex hormone levels in SCI patients. CONCLUSION: In our study, male SCI patients showed sex hormonal abnormalities of hypothalamo-pituitary type. And elevated serum prolactin level might influence hormonal changes and sexual dysfunction in male SCI patients.