HCG with Testosterone

The receipt

Evidence on the combination

Controlled trials

Coviello et al., 2005 · Hsieh et al., 2013 · Chen et al., 2019

What each does alone

• Libido & hormones · Daily shotHCGHormoneMen on testosterone use it to stay fertile. The standard 500 IU every-other-day dose comes from a 2005 study.Approved drugFDA approvedChecked Oct 23
• Libido & hormones · Weekly shotTestosteroneHormonePrescribed for low testosterone; also the original anabolic steroid. Normal is 300–1,000 ng/dL.Approved drugFDA approvedChecked Oct 23

Mechanism overlap · reasoning, not evidence

HCG

Hormone — Glycoprotein Gonadotropin (LH analog)

Testosterone

Androgen — Primary Male Sex Hormone

Reasoning, not evidence: what each is described to do says nothing about what they do together.

What the studies found

Healthy men, 3 weeks (Coviello et al., 2005)

• What was given — 29 men randomized to testosterone enanthate 200 mg weekly plus placebo or hCG 125, 250 or 500 IU every other day.
• What it found — Testosterone with placebo cut intratesticular testosterone by 94%. With hCG it rose with the dose: 25% below baseline at 125 IU, 7% below at 250 IU and 26% above at 500 IU.
• Limits — Three weeks; it measured testicular testosterone, not sperm.

Hypogonadal men on testosterone therapy (Hsieh et al., 2013)

• What was given — Records of 26 men on testosterone gel or weekly injections with hCG 500 IU every other day; mean follow-up 6.2 months.
• What it found — No man became azoospermic, semen parameters didn't change, and 9 of the 26 contributed to a pregnancy.
• Limits — Retrospective, no control group.

Men with isolated hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (Chen et al., 2019)

• What was given — Records of 107 men: hCG plus oral testosterone undecanoate (54) or hCG alone (53); median follow-up 29 months.
• What it found — Testosterone normalized sooner with the combination; sperm appearance and concentration did not differ between the groups.
• Limits — Retrospective.