Zinc → Testosterone
Higher Zinc increases Testosterone.
Mahajan 1982 found that 50 mg of elemental zinc as acetate a day for six months raised serum testosterone from 2.8 to 5.2 ng per milliliter versus no change on placebo in 20 men on hemodialysis. Prasad 1997 then saw testosterone fall under zinc restriction in four young men and rise after zinc gluconate in nine older men.
Randomized trial · Contested · N=20
Supported by an experiment or a tightly identified design. Read the caveats.
Mechanism
Authors treat zinc deficiency as a reversible cause of low testosterone. They do not isolate one enzyme. Mahajan, Abbasi, Prasad and colleagues assigned 20 stable hemodialysis patients to 50 mg of elemental zinc as acetate or placebo for six months. Plasma zinc rose from 75 to 100 micrograms per deciliter. Serum testosterone rose from 2.8 to 5.2 ng per milliliter. Sperm count rose. LH and FSH fell. The placebo arm did not move. ; the abstract is a double-blind trial. Prasad, Mantzoros, Beck, Hess and Brewer (1997) restricted dietary zinc in four young men. Serum testosterone fell from 39.9 to 10.6 nmol per liter after twenty weeks. In nine marginally zinc-deficient older men, 459 micromoles a day of zinc as gluconate for three to six months raised testosterone from 8.3 to 16.0 nmol per liter. A cross-section of forty men tied lymphocyte zinc to testosterone.
Caveats
Researchers assigned people to a salt or a control, so this is a trial stamp. Mahajan is twenty men on dialysis in 1982. Prasad's main slices are four and nine men, and the older-man arm is before-after, not placebo. More papers of the same design do not settle the claim. This is a journal entry, not medical advice and not a reason to take zinc to raise testosterone.
Effect
qualitative. Mahajan 1982: zinc acetate 50 mg, 6 mo, N=20 HD. T 2.8 to 5.2 ng/mL. Prasad 1997: restriction N=4, T 39.9 to 10.6 nmol/L; elderly gluconate N=9, T 8.3 to 16.0.
Nodes
Named confounders
Cite this page
What Causes What. “Zinc → Testosterone.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-zinc-t (atlas updated 2026-09-02).
Papers
- Effect of oral zinc therapy on gonadal function in hemodialysis patients. A double-blind study.
SK Mahajan, AA Abbasi, AS Prasad, P Rabbani, WA Briggs, FD McDonald · 1982 · Annals of internal medicine
- Zinc status and serum testosterone levels of healthy adults.
AS Prasad, CS Mantzoros, FW Beck, JW Hess, GJ Brewer · 1997 · Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.)