Testosterone for menopause: The treatment is rising in popularity, but does it work?

If you're approaching menopause, you are likely being bombarded by online ads for treatments promising relief for everything from hot flashes to brain fog.

Some of these therapies have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and have strong evidence to support them — but one hormone-based treatment that's gaining in popularity has much less science to back its use for menopause.

More doctors are writing their menopausal patients prescriptions for testosterone therapy.

A 2026 study conducted in the U.S. recorded over 90,000 off-label prescriptions for testosterone to women in 2025, mainly among women ages 45 to 64 and those with diagnoses of menopause.

This marked a 58.7% increase from 2024.

These prescriptions are "off-label" because the FDA has not yet approved testosterone as a treatment for menopause, perimenopause (the transition into menopause) or postmenopause (the time period afterward).

So, does scientific evidence support the use of testosterone to alleviate menopause symptoms? Or is it too soon to say? While testosterone treatment for menopause has gained popularity, there's limited evidence to back up its use, experts say. (Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images) No direct link to menopause symptoms Although often called a "male" hormone, testosterone is also produced by females, albeit at lower levels than in males, on average.

There's a common misconception that females experience "androgen deficiency" — a marked decline in testosterone and related hormones — leading up to menopause, said Susan Davis , a professor of endocrinology and the head of the Women's Health Research Program at Monash University in Australia.

This is not the case.

Rather, in females, testosterone levels tend to drop slowly between ages 20 and 60, and there's a slight rebound from age 60 onward.

Menopause, which generally occurs around age 51 to 52, is not linked to a marked decline in testosterone .

Estrogen and progesterone fluctuate during perimenopause and then decline sharply, and these changes clearly contribute to the telltale symptoms of perimenopause and menopause.

Placebo-controlled trials have not been able to show that testosterone treatment helps to alleviate brain fog or improve well-being, mood, bone density or muscle function in menopausal patients, said Davis, who has conducted a number of these trials herself .

"Telling women that fatigue, low mood, brain fog are symptoms of androgen deficiency is completely untrue," she emphasized.