Symptoms & questions

Testosterone for women: what it does, and how you get it in Malta

Testosterone is a female hormone too — your ovaries make it, and it falls with age and menopause. It is a recognised treatment, best established for low sexual desire that standard HRT hasn't restored, with growing interest in energy, mood and musculoskeletal symptoms. In Malta there is no female-specific licensed product, so it is prescribed privately and off-licence, which means access depends on finding a willing, menopause-literate private prescriber who will also monitor your levels.

Last verified: 10 July 2026 · checked against Malta private-prescribing and named-patient routes · re-verified quarterly

What does testosterone actually do for women?

Testosterone is not "the male hormone" — women produce it throughout life, in smaller amounts than men but in larger amounts than estrogen for much of the cycle. It contributes to sexual desire and arousal, energy, mood, and the maintenance of muscle and bone. Levels decline gradually with age, and the ovaries' output drops around menopause.

The strongest evidence, and the reason most menopause bodies recognise it, is for low sexual desire that causes distress — clinically, hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction — in women whose other menopause symptoms are already treated. The evidence for using testosterone to treat fatigue, mood or musculoskeletal symptoms on their own is still emerging and less settled; a good prescriber will tell you where the evidence is firm and where it is hopeful.

Who is testosterone for?

Typically, it is considered for a woman who is already on HRT, whose estrogen is optimised, and who still has troubling low desire — testosterone is usually an add-on, not a first move. It is not a general "energy boost", not a weight-loss drug, and not a substitute for estrogen. A prescriber will take a history, check that other causes of low desire (relationship, mood, dryness, medication, thyroid) have been considered, and measure a baseline blood level before starting.

Because dryness and discomfort are their own brake on desire, testosterone is often discussed alongside treating genitourinary symptoms and reviewing low libido as a whole — desire is multifactorial, and testosterone is one lever among several.

Is testosterone licensed for women in Malta?

No female-specific testosterone product is licensed in Malta (or in most of Europe). In practice this means one of two things:

• Off-licence prescribing: an experienced doctor prescribes a low, female-appropriate amount of a product licensed for men, deliberately dosed down and monitored. Off-licence use is legal and common in menopause medicine — it simply means the product wasn't formally licensed for this precise purpose.
• The named-patient route: if a more suitable product isn't marketed locally, a consultant can request it through Malta's Exceptional Medicinal Treatment (EMT) route (legal basis L.N. 58 of 2018), submitting an EMT Request Form to the Directorate for Pharmaceutical Affairs.

We don't publish doses or a regimen here — the amount, the form and the monitoring are decisions your doctor makes for your body. What matters for a Maltese reader is that both routes exist, and that "there's no licensed version for women" is not the same as "you can't have it."

How do I get it, practically, in Malta?

Three things shape access here:

1. It's private and out-of-pocket. Like menopausal HRT, testosterone for women is not on the Government Formulary — see HRT in Malta for how private-pay works.
2. You need a willing prescriber. Not every doctor offers it, and some are cautious because it's off-licence. A private gynaecologist or menopause-focused doctor is the usual route — start with finding a menopause doctor in Malta.
3. Monitoring is part of the deal. Testosterone is given with blood-level checks to keep you in the female range and to watch for side effects. If a source offers it without any monitoring, that's a flag.

When should I see a doctor?

If low desire is distressing you, that alone is reason enough to raise it — you don't need to justify it. Book a proper review rather than self-sourcing testosterone if you notice unwanted effects on any product (acne, unusual hair growth, voice change), or if low libido comes with low mood, exhaustion or pain that might point elsewhere, such as thyroid disease. A prescriber can separate "this is hormonal" from "this is something else."