America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for safeguarding the health, wellness and wellbeing of the population from the dangers of consuming certain substances. The FDA has now announced that it is going to insist, going forward, that manufacturers of two types of testosterone gel put a warning on the boxes of the products. The two types are Testim and AndroGel.
This action is going to be required because there have been a number of reports of serious side effects that have occurred when children were accidentally exposed to the product, through having contact with someone who was being treated with the product.
The gels are normally used by men who either produce very little of the sex hormone testosterone, or none at all. Both of the gels are applied to the upper body twice per day to help improve the amount of testosterone in the body.
Users are instructed to wash their hands after they have used the product, and to cover any treated area of skin by wearing clothing. Nevertheless, eight reports have come to light where children have been exposed to the product in a secondary way. The children range in age from just nine months old to five years old. In most of the cases that were reported, the users failed to follow the instructions on how to use the product appropriately, and this resulted in the child coming into contact with the substance.
Side effects of this contact were serious for the children involved. The effects included enlargement of the external sexual organs such as the clitoris or penis, the premature development of pubic hair, an increase in self-stimulation in the children involved, aggressive behaviour and an advancing in bone age.
In most cases, when the child was no longer exposed to the product the symptoms were reversed, but in a small number of cases the effects proved to be permanent.