David S. Lopez, MS, MPH, DrPH2019-2020 Texas RCMAR Scholar
Visit Dr. Lopez's web bio at the Department of Preventive Medicine and Population Health
Testosterone deficiency, therapy, and mortality among older Hispanic men
Mentors: Yong-fang Kuo, PhD and Kyriakos Markides, PhD
Racial and ethnic differences in mortality rates, including cardiovascular- and cancer-specific remained a public health and clinical challenge in the United States (U.S.). Similar health disparities are reported for the incidence of those cancers related to obesity such as kidney, bladder, and prostate cancer (herein we coin the term obesity-related cancers). The Hispanic population is one of the U.S. ethnic groups who is disproportionally affected by mortality and obesity-related cancers. In particular, among Hispanic men, there is a paucity of research about the role of lifestyle (e.g. diet), epidemiological and clinical factors (e.g. testosterone [T] deficiency, testosterone therapy [TTh], statins) in the risk of mortality and incidence of obesity-related cancers. We propose to capitalize on the NHANES and SEER-Medicare databases to conduct prospective analysis. We propose to investigate the association of TTh with a risk of obesity-related cancers and cancer-specific mortality among Hispanic adult men in SEER Medicare, and to determine the association between T deficiency and all-cause, cardiovascular- and cancer-specific mortality among Hispanic adult men in NHANES.