BPH, Hair Loss Drugs Could Increase Prostate Cancer Risk ...

In case you missed the warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last June, here?s another one from Health Canada: if you take the prescription drugs finasteride or dutasteride for BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia) or hair loss, you should know these drugs carry a warning that they may be associated with an increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer.?Canada has just added the warning to its drug labels for finasteride (Proscar, Propecia) and dutasteride (Avodart, Jalyn). The FDA updated the Warnings and Precautions section of labels for the 5-alpha reductase inhibitors in June 2011 after its Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 17-0 that dutasteride and finasteride should not be prescribed to prevent prostate cancer because both drugs were linked to a higher incidence of high-grade prostate tumors. In a strange twist, both dutasteride and finasteride had been shown to help prevent low-risk cancers better than placebo in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) and the Reduction by Dutasteride of Prostate Cancer Events (REDUCE) trial. However, both trials also found an increase in the incidence of high-grade prostate cancers among men who took the 5-alpha reductase inhibitors. The decision by Health Canada to put the warning on labels for the BPH and hair loss drugs was based on its review of PCPT and REDUCE. Both of these trials showed that the possible benefits of using these drugs to prevent low-grade prostate cancer were small relative to the risk of men developing high-grade prostate cancer. Read more

Source: http://www.prostate.net/2012/bph/bph-hair-loss-drugs-could-increase-prostate-cancer-risk/

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