How does Spiro work?

[eftychia]

A web search turned up conflicting answers, so I now turn here ... Does spironalactone cause less testosterone to be produced in the body, or does it prevent cells from responding to testosterone that's still there (i.e. bind to testosterone-receptor sites so the testosterone can't)?

Or to put it another way: while I know that spironalactone reduces the effects of testosterone, will a blood test actually show less testosterone present, or will a test show the same or higher amounts of testosterone that's just no longer doing anything?

[xposted by hand to LL]

Comments

[mfb]

(I don't know anything about this unfortunately, but I wanted to say your icon is the cleverest thing and I like it a lot :) )

[eftychia]

Thanks! :-) There's at least one person on LJ or DW who did their own version based on mine, and at least one other who came up with almost the same design completely independently. (Which doesn't mean I'm waving off your appreciation of the cleverness of it, just acknowledging somebody else was similarly clever as well.)

[talkswithwind]

Holy late post, Batman, but from my understanding Spiro interrupts the metabolic pathway that leads to Testosterone production. That said the wikipedia article says it does both. Also, the citations point to an actual scientific paper (though one from the 70's).