SUMMARY :
The woman plays a much
more important role in the andropause
than could appear at first sight. She is involved at 3 extremely different levels.
The wife generally observes that her husband has changed; he has become less active, more introverted, both on the sexual level, and even more so in his social life.
She is the one who encourages him
to seek help.
Everyone knows how crucial the female function is in masculine sexual activity,
but from fifty years of age onwards,
she becomes even more important since
in many couples, it is often she who takes the initiative in the relationship. And yet,
for a variety of reasons, the woman is often loath to occupy a role with which
she is unfamiliar, having never
previously played that role.
The third level of woman's involvement
in the treatment of andropause is quite different. Treatment for the menopause
for women was generalised many years
before that of the fifty-year old male.
Valuable information has thereby been accumulated over the years, in particular
the importance of global examinations searching for risk factors which need
to be treated. This same way of considering
a male subject suffering from
andropause-related disorders before starting androgenotherapy if it is seen
to be necessary, and if there are no
contra-indications, is without a shadow
of doubt the most suitable and the most helpful to men.
Finally, the paper examines the various forms of androgenotherapy
in the light of learnings on both the beneficial and the detrimental effects of oestrogens.