• We can see that correlation of testosterone with age makes sense: levels are dropping off as women age, just as we would expect to see in serum measurements.

• You can also see a VERY strong correlation between levels of testosterone and symptoms of excess testosterone (excess facial/body hair). Women who complain of these symptoms have much higher levels than women who do not complain of these symptoms.





• Here we can see that as women take topical testosterone, levels go up in a dose-dependent manner. This is HUGE if you plan to use saliva testing to monitor supplementation. The recent North American Menopause Society (NAMS) publication stated that they saw no increase in salivary levels with topical supplementation(1). We see otherwise.

• Note the expected values are different if you test at 12 hours or 24 hours.

• Have people test at 12 or 24 hours, so we can give expected values for that particular situation. Topical testosterone ranges are not currently on the ZRT web site for women, but they will be soon.



• In men we can also see the linear, dose-dependent relationship between salivary levels and the amount of topical testosterone taken.





The recent publication from Menopause showed little clinical utility for measuring testosterone in saliva. The data in their publication showed almost no correlation with serum. I will address this issue in the next installment.

(1). Flyckt, Rebecca, James Liu, Heidi Frasure, Kathryn Weksleman et al. "Comparison of salivary versus serum testosterone levels in." The Journal of The North American Menopause Society 16.4 (2009): 1-9. Pr