Research Brief: Self-Reports of a Constellation of Persistent Antiandrogenic, Estrogenic, Physical, and Psychological Effects of Finasteride Usage Among Men

Abstract

Our research objective is to understand more, through subjective, self-reports on discussion boards/forums, persons’ experiences associated with the use of drugs that alter androgen metabolism, such as finasteride. Finasteride is an orally active, specific inhibitor of 5α-reductase, which is localized to many androgen-dependent tissues. Finasteride inhibits the conversion of testosterone (T) to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), and is commonly used to treat benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) and male pattern baldness (MPB), both disorders associated with elevated DHT levels and 5α-reductase activity in the prostate and hair follicles, respectively. It is now acknowledged that long-term use and discontinuation of finasteride has adverse effects (AEs); however, these claims have not been well documented. In this study, discussion board posts (forums) were analyzed as self-reports of what finasteride users indicate is problematic for them. Reports were categorized by the age of subjects as well as the types of AEs described: antiandrogenic, estrogenic, central, and nonspecific/severe. A total of 244 cases were recorded and analyzed on the discussion forum on propeciahelp.com. Among these, 74 (32%) cases reported antiandrogenic affects, 43 (19%) reported estrogenic effects, 70 (30%) reported central effects, 11 (5%) reported nonspecific/severe AEs, and 31 (14%) reported AEs in all categories. The categorization of AEs may prompt further investigation into the pathophysiology of post-finasteride syndrome (PFS). Also, subjective reports may engender greater understanding of the perceived lasting AEs of finasteride.

The Steroidogenesis Inhibitor Finasteride Reduces the Response to Both Stressful and Rewarding Stimuli

“…Together with the reduction in saccharin or sucrose preference, this index has been long regarded as one of the most robust predictors of depression-like responses in animal models [42]. From this perspective, our findings were consistent with clinical reports indicating the association of FIN with depressive symptoms, including behavioral apathy and anhedonia [43]. Our experiments revealed that FIN yielded similar effects on stress reactivity in both sexes as well as in castrated males.…”

Drug Treatment for Androgenetic Alopecia: First Italian Questionnaire Survey on What Dermatologists Think about Finasteride

“…Other side effects reported following treatment with finasteride are linked to the psychological sphere, even if there is a lack of published data and evidence is mostly related to self-reports by patients [ 32 ]. Only 2% of patients treated by the surveyed dermatologists reported diminished quality of life, and eventually anhedonia (Fig.…”

Mental Health Monitoring Based on Multiperception Intelligent Wearable Devices

“…As shown in Figure 1, people with high ASQ scores and those with low ASQ scores have certain overlap in the daily speech features, which is the reason for the presence of noise in the sampled data on a daily basis. So, sampling weekly is a good way to avoid the instability of microdata; in addition, it can supplement the scarcity of macrodata; there are 64 samples from 16 people for 4 weeks, which is enough to support training a simple machine learning model [17].…”