EDITORIAL COMMENT It is a well-known issue that men with chronic renal disease or failure are more prone to low testosterone. In this retrospective cohort, authors have calculated serum testosterone levels from assayable serum samples collected at the time of transplantation of 197 first time kidney transplant recipients who were followed more than 6 years. Besides being an independent risk factor for patient death, low testosterone levels have also been associated with worse patient and graft survival rates in this cohort. As expected deaths in the low testosterone group has been mainly due to cardiac events. Nevertheless, the evidence from the study needs to be confirmed prospectively and also the role of testosterone replacement therapy must be well established in the setting of kidney transplantation. Also in the search for a reliable biomarker for posttransplant risk stratification for male transplant recipients, low testosterone might have a spot at this point. SUGGESTED READING Iglesias P, Carrero JJ and Diez JJ. Gonadal dysfunction in men with chronic kidney disease: clinical features, prognostic implications and therapeutic options. J Nephrol 2012;25:31-42. Yarkin Kamil Yakupoglu MD
