Men's Health: Aging & Metabolism

Dr. Bhasin is an internationally recognized expert in human aging, clinical trials of function promoting therapies for older adults, functional decline in aging, and testosterone biology. He chaired the Endocrine Society’s Expert Panel for the development of Guidelines for Testosterone Therapy. He is a translational researcher, with over 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 130 reviews and book chapters. Dr. Bhasin’s research has led to new applications of androgens and selective androgen receptor modulators. His pioneering research in androgen biology and anabolic therapies for aging-associated sarcopenia has been supported by several NIH-funded grants.

He received his MD from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India, residency training at Northwestern University Medical School and fellowship training in Endocrinology and Nutrition at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. Bhasin has been the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards. He has served as: Associate Editor of the JCEM; Chair of the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the Endocrine Society; Chair of the Clinical Guidelines Panel of the Endocrine Society for diagnosis and treatment of hypogonadism; and Chair of American Board of Internal Medicine Endocrinology and Metabolism Board. He has been selected as one of the Best Doctors in America by Castle Connolly and by Boston Magazine. He is the recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Clinical Investigator Award of the Endocrine Society

Monty Montano PhD is a Principal Investigator at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Muscle and Aging Interventions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Montano received a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University School of Medicine and did his postdoctoral work at the Harvard School of Public Health. He conducts international translational research on aging, musculoskeletal regeneration, and chronic HIV infection. Dr. Montano is the principal investigator of an NIH-sponsored 5-year study to comprehensively evaluate physical function and muscle maintenance in older individuals with HIV infection on effective therapy compared to age-matched uninfected individuals.  Dr. Montano is a chartered member of the National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review and he is the author of a book on translational medicine entitled, “Translational Biology in Medicine: Models from Aging, Muscle Regeneration and Infection.”

Representative Papers

Atypical Skeletal Muscle Profiles in HIV+ Asymptomatic Middle-Aged Adults.
Biomarker signatures of aging.
BET bromodomain inhibition as a novel strategy for reactivation of HIV-1.
Premature expression of a muscle fibrosis axis in chronic HIV infection.
Age and Sex Distributions of Age-Related Biomarker Values in Healthy Older Adults from the Long Life Family Study.

Dr. Basaria is an internationally recognized reproductive endocrinologist with expertise in sex-steroid biology, endocrine complications of  androgen deprivation therapy in men with prostate cancer, and association of sex steroids with pain perception and pain tolerance. He is also an expert clinical trialist and has designed numerous clinical trials that are known for their novel design. Most of his clinical trials have focused on the effects of androgen replacement in men and women where he has evaluated various efficacy outcomes such as sexual function, fatigue, quality of life and physical function. He is also an expert on the risks of androgen replacement, in particular cardiometabolic disease. Dr. Basaria has over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 30 book chapters and over 250 abstracts. His group was the first to report that testosterone replacement improves pain perception, sexual function and quality of life in men with opioid-induced androgen deficiency. His group was also the first to report metabolic adverse effects of androgen deprivation in men with prostate cancer. He has also conducted several epidemiological studies in collaboration with investigators from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the InChianti Study and the Framingham Heart Study evaluating the role of sex steroids on inflammatory markers and metabolism.

In addition to his own active research program, he is also the Associate Director of the Section of Men’s Health, Aging and Metabolism Unit at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In this capacity, he oversees several trials examining the effect of testosterone replacement on vitality, physical function and quality of life.

He received his MBBS from the Aga Khan University Medical School in Karachi, Pakistan; residency training at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston; and fellowship training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD.

He serve as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology Medical Sciencesand is on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He lead the section on Male Reproduction on the Self-Assessment Committee of the Endocrine Society for 6 years and has contributed to the development of the Endocrine Society’s Male Androgen Deficiency Performance Improvement Module. He is also a member of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Exam Writing Committee at the American Board of Internal Medicine where he leads the field of Male Reproduction. He is also a recipient of several teaching awards and provides high-quality care for his patients in the Male Reproduction Clinic at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Representative Papers

Hyperglycemia and Insulin Resistance in Men with Prostate Cancer undergoing Androgen Deprivation Therapy.
Metabolic syndrome in Men with Prostate Cancer undergoing long-term Androgen Deprivation Therapy.
Adverse events associated with testosterone administration in a randomized trial.
Effects of Testosterone Replacement in Men with Opioid-Induced Androgen Deficiency: A Randomized-Controlled Trial.
Testosterone replacement in androgen-deficient men with ejaculatory dysfunction: A randomized controlled trial.
Effects of transdermal testosterone gel or an aromatase inhibitor on prostate volume in older men.
Effects of long-term testosterone administration on cognition in older men with low or low-to-normal testosterone concentrations: a prespecified secondary analysis of data from the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled TEAAM trial.
Male hypogonadism.
 Testosterone for Evaluation of Androgen Deficiency.
A subset of men with age-related decline in testosterone have gonadotroph autoantibodies.

Small Animal Resource Core Leader Ravi Jasuja received his Bachelor’s degree in Technology from the Indian institute of Technology, Delhi , PhD from the University of Hawaii, Manoa with Dr. Randy Larsen and conducted his postdoctoral research with Dr. Shahid Khan (at Albert Einstein College  of Medicine)  and Dr. Frank Ferrone (at Drexel University). Dr. Jasuja is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Endocrinology section and the director of Metabolic Phenotyping Core. His research interests include: 1. Biophysical characterization of ligand-specific conformational dynamics in Androgen Receptor 2. Mechanisms of tissue-specific action of androgens on muscle, bone, prostate adipose tissue remodeling by circulating androgens in animal models and development  of Selective  Androgen Receptor Modulators.

Karol Pencina is a Chief Biostatistician at Section on Men’s Health, Aging and Metabolism at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His professional experience comprises of inter-disciplinary applications of statistical methods in outcomes research and clinical trials. He conceptualizes statistical design as well as performs actual analyses involving understudied aspect of long-term testosterone treatment on ageing in older men.Dr. Pencina is also biostatistician on the NIA / FNIH Sarcopenia Consortium, which addresses the influence of body mass and function on mobility limitation and downstream clinical endpoints. The purpose of this grant is to establish new optimal definition of Sarcopenia and assessment of its performance as a biomarker for identification of individuals at risk of physical disability. Previously, he has been professionally affiliated with the Framingham Heart Study, where he provided advanced statistical design an analytics on numerous projects related to analyzing the effect of sub-clinical disease measures on the risk of cardiovascular events and ageing. Dr. Pencina methodological research focuses on new measures of improvement in model performance and provides their meaningful interpretations. The main areas of application include building risk prediction models, evaluating the incremental performance of new biomarkers and to determine its usefulness in prevention strategies.

Dr. Storer has extensive experience and expertise gained as an exercise physiologist over the past 35 years with successful contributions to several previous and ongoing, randomized controlled trials. Cohorts investigated have included healthy young and older men and women, mobility limited older men, frail older men and women with mobility limitations, men and women with HIV-infection, COPD, and end-stage renal disease. Presently he is the co-chair of the Physical Components Committee of a multicenter pragmatic trial on fall prevention funded by PCORI.  He is also the coauthor of a text on cardiopulmonary exercise testing and interpretation and have recently completed chapters on exercise training and prescription in COPD and chronic kidney disease.  Dr. Storer is the Director of the Laboratory of Exercise Physiology and Physical Function at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

My current research is focused on the hematopoietic effects of androgens, redox regulation and obesity, and the metabolic benefits of myostatin blockade. I am also researching testosterone-mediated blood effect in anemic old mice. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that testosterone improved RBC indices independent of erythropoietin and hepcidin (cite). Subsequent preliminary studies have led us to hypothesize that testosterone action can shift from acutely pro-erythropoietic to pro-survival depending on the host context (age, anemia).

Growing evidence suggests that prenatal exposure to androgens may play a role in the programming of metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Evidence from prenatally androgenized animal models exposed to testosterone in early and late gestation demonstrate several cardiometabolic impairments including hypertension, insulin resistance and adiposity in adult life. Pregnant women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have higher testosterone levels during pregnancy and delivery compared to healthy mothers and their offspring tend to develop worse metabolic parameters. Despite evidence from animal studies and patient-specific populations (ie. PCOS), data linking prenatal androgens to adult health outcomes in the general human population has not been well studied. The issue of developmental androgenization is of clinical relevance for investigation because of increasing human exposure to endocrine-disrupting environmental factors that interact with androgen receptor signaling. My research is focused on advancing our understanding of early programming effects of androgens on cardiovascular markers, can help identify biomarkers for human disease, potential therapeutic targets and early periods for intervention.

Dr. Goldman received her medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. She trained in internal medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where she also served as chief resident. She did her fellowship training in endocrinology at Brigham and Women’s hospital, conducting research on the role of sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) in regulating testosterone’s transport and action. Her career focus is on patient care in the areas of andrology, transgender care, diabetes, and medical education.

Representative Papers

A Reappraisal of Testosterone’s Binding in Circulation: Physiological and Clinical Implication
Adverse health effects of androgen use.
Visual Vignette
Hypogonadism: Its Prevalence and Diagnosis.

Nancy Latham, PhD, PT is an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at Harvard University in Boston Massachusetts.  She completed her training in Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto and McGill University, a PhD at the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the University of Auckland and a NIDRR post-doctoral fellowship in Health Services Research at Boston University. Her research interest is in applying methods from the field of clinical epidemiology, such as randomized controlled trials, cohort studies and meta-analyses, to rehabilitation and disability-related research. She is particularly interested in innovative interventions to extend the benefits of rehabilitation programs to people in the community after usual rehabilitation care ends. She was a co-principal investigator of the HIP Rehab trial, an RCT of a home-based exercise program for people after hip fracture which was published in JAMA. She is currently the Study Director of the STRIDE study, a pragmatic randomized controlled trial of a primary care based intervention to reduce serious fall-related injuries in 10 health systems in the U.S.A.  She is also the PI on studies to evaluate technology to improve health and function in persons with Parkinson Disease and Spinal Cord Injury. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and is on the editorial board of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.