Vital hormones may help predict men’s long-term health

Scientists have identified a hormone that appears in males during puberty and is crucial in determining whether they will get specific diseases later in life.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom have shown that the new insulin-like peptide hormone INSL3 is a crucial early biomarker for predicting age-related illness since it is constant over extended periods.

The research was managed by Ravinder Anand-Ivell and Richard Ivell and is the latest of three recent studies into the hormone.

The research has been published in Frontiers in Endocrinology.

The same cells that produce testosterone also produce INSL3, but this new hormone changes over a man’s life. The amount during puberty is relatively constant throughout a man’s life, declining slightly into old age.

Compared to other quantitative markers, this makes it the first trustworthy and crystal-clear predictive biomarker of age-related morbidity.

The results show a correlation between blood levels of INSL3 and several age-related illnesses, including bone weakening, sexual dysfunction, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.