Why Avodart and Peoscar(Finasteride are Ignored?

Studies’ Complications

Then came the studies of finasteride and dutasteride for prostate cancer. The drugs block the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, a hormone that prostate cancers need to grow. They are on the market to shrink the prostate in older men, whose prostates often enlarge. (Finasteride is also sold to grow hair — but the dose is one-fifth the dose that shrinks prostates and that dose has not been tested for cancer prevention.) Doctors can prescribe the drugs for cancer prevention but, at this point, that is not on their label.

The prostate cancer studies were complicated by other another factor; at first, researchers thought, erroneously, that finasteride was actually spurring the growth of aggressive prostate cancers. The drug’s side effects can include impotence or decreased ejaculate. But the Food and Drug Administration concluded that these effects, if they occur at all, are gone after a year.

Now, even though the F.D.A. deemed the drug’s adverse reactions to be “usually mild and transient.” The American Urological Association and the American Society for Clinical Oncology recommend that men 50 and older consider taking it. But there appears to be little interest even among high-risk men.