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Objective: The effect of gender in development and chronicity of stuttering is well known. It is more common and chronic in males. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the relation between developmental stuttering and the serum level of testosterone, which is one of the androgens.
Methods: In this study, 25 developmental stuttering patients aged 7 to 12 were included as patient group and 25 healthy children with the same demographic properties were included as control group. The testosterone levels of the two groups were determined in ng/ml by ELISA method. The difference between the means of the two group was analyzed by Pearson correlation test.
Results: The medians of the testosterone levels of the patient and control group were determined as 20 ng/mL (min-max=12.00-184.00) and 5 ng/mL (min-max=2.00-30.00), respectively. Testosterone level of the patient group was significantly higher than the control group (p=0.001). Besides this, there was a significant correlation between the severity of the stuttering and the testosterone levels in the patient group (p=0.0001).
Conclusion: The findings of the study show that testosterone may have an effect on the severity of developmental stutter and the clinical differences between the genders. However, further investigations are needed for a conclusion that testosterone may have a role in the etiology of developmental stutter.