Healthcare Testosterone Matters In Women’s Health. Research And Clinical Practice Need To Catch Up. By Eve Cunningham ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Dr. Eve Cunningham is a physician leader in senior and women’s health. Follow Author Aug 24, 2026, 09:13pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Summary Women's health faces a critical challenge: despite producing testosterone throughout life, no FDA-approved product exists for them. OB/GYN Dr. Komal Bajaj attributes this gap to decades of underfunded research, regulatory hurdles, and fragmented healthcare systems, citing the 2002 Women's Health Initiative's lasting impact on hormone therapy. She highlights that normalizing or dismissing women's hormonal symptoms incurs significant personal costs, affecting well-being and productivity, alongside a staggering $1 trillion annual global economic burden. Bajaj advocates for comprehensive evaluations and patient empowerment, expressing optimism that growing investment in women's health research will lead to clearer answers and more informed treatment choices.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - MAY 31: Suz Redfern and her husband Marty wait at the Cape Town clinic. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images) Getty Images Testosterone is often thought of as a male hormone.But women produce it throughout life, and it acts on androgen receptors across the body. Still, the United States has no FDA-approved testosterone product for women.
That disconnect reflects a larger challenge in women’s health: what women experience clinically and what medicine has rigorously studied are not always aligned. The distance between the two reflects decades of research funding gaps, regulatory decisions, clinical education, and healthcare systems that have not consistently considered hormonal health as part of the broader picture of women’s health across an entire lifetime.
Dr. Komal Bajaj is a board-certified OB/GYN and clinical geneticist who previously served as an enterprise chief quality officer and is now Chief Medical Officer at Biote . I spoke with her about what the evidence supports today, the legacy of the Women’s Health Initiative and what it will take to responsibly expand women’s options.
Q: You have built your career around quality, patient safety and diagnostic excellence. What connected that work to women’s hormonal health?
Across my career, the core question has been remarkably consistent: how do we design systems that close the gap between evidence and practice? I have worked on the outcomes health systems measure and are held accountable for - hospital-acquired infections, falls, readmissions and wound complications. Improving those outcomes saves lives.
More recently, I’ve become focused on how hormone physiology impacts those outcomes. Hormones are known to interact with many of the systems involved in health and recovery, including muscle, bone, sleep, inflammation, metabolism, and immune function. Understanding the nuances of that impact is where the work needs to go next.
Q: Women produce testosterone, yet there is no FDA-approved product for them in the United States. How do you make sense of that gap?
I’ve spent years studying where healthcare systems struggle to get to the right diagnosis at the right time and working to fix it. This is one of the more striking gaps I’ve encountered.…