{"doi":"10.1111/and.14186","title":"Feminising hormone therapy reduces testicular ACE‐2 receptor expression: Implications for treatment or prevention of COVID‐19 infection in men","abstract":"It has been proposed that men hospitalised with COVID-19 be treated with oestrogen or progesterone to improve COVID-19 outcomes. Transgender women (male-to-female) are routinely treated with oestrogen or oestrogen +progesterone for feminisation which provides a model for the effect of feminising hormones on testicular tissue. Our goal was to analyse differences in ACE-2 expression in testicles of trans-women taking oestrogen or oestrogen +progesterone. Orchiectomy specimens were collected from trans-women undergoing gender-affirming surgery, who were taking oestrogen or oestrogen+progesterone preoperatively. For controls, we used benign orchiectomy specimens from cis-gender men. All specimens were stained with H&E, Trichrome (fibrosis), insulin-like 3 antibody (Leydig cell) and ACE-2 IHC. Cells per high-powered field were counted by cell type (Leydig, Sertoli and Germ). Stain intensity was rated on a 0-2 scale. On immunohistochemistry staining for Leydig cells and ACE-2 staining, the oestrogen+progesterone cohort had fewer Leydig cells compared with controls. The oestrogen+progesterone cohort also had greater degree of tissue fibrosis compared with controls and the oestrogen cohort. This work supports the hopeful possibility that a short course of progesterone (or oestrogen+progesterone) could downregulate ACE-2 to protect men from COVID-19 infection.","journal":"Andrologia","year":2021,"id":200451,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9549,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":778143,"name":"Chau M. Bui","orcid":"0000-0002-5371-6251","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":103949,"name":"Yi Zhang","orcid":"0000-0001-9861-4681","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":778777,"name":"Xiaopen Yuan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":619405,"name":"Carissa A. Huynh","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":659454,"name":"Harneet Jawanda","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":658848,"name":"Wohaib Hasan","orcid":"0000-0001-8362-1117","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":343605,"name":"Warren G. Tourtellotte","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":526934,"name":"Daniel Luthringer","orcid":"0000-0001-8189-0540","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":549891,"name":"Maurice M. Garcia","orcid":"0000-0001-6165-1200","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":514808,"name":"John M. Masterson","orcid":"0000-0002-0388-1670","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":41,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:50:48.624274Z","pmid":"34514615","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}