Finast prevents the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in the body.
Finasteride pills hair loss drugs that are also used to prevent baldness. It's probably the most widely prescribed SSRI in the U.S., says John H. Stevens, MD, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Florida College Medicine. In 2011, according to FDA data, Propecia raked in $21 billion sales. A 2013 study found that Propecia was the most frequently prescribed SSRIs in the U.S. At time, FDA finasteride 1mg pills approved Propecia as a treatment for male pattern hair loss (MPHL). That means the drug, which is sold as Proscar, works by blocking conversion of testosterone to sex-steroid-binding globules, resulting in hair loss. In the current study, published last week in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Stevens and his colleagues tried to answer why, after Propecia was approved, many patients continued to suffer from their hair loss after taking the drug. As it turned out, "there wasn't a lot of consistency in how the patients reported taking drug," says Stevens. Instead of following established practice or an individualized regimen for this condition, patients tended to use the same dosages, but differ in how they applied the drug. Not all patients were using Propecia at the same time, and some may have been using it at the same time as one of the other drug classes available, Stevens explains. (In that case, patients were prescribed a total of three SSRI drugs. The researchers assumed these were only three SSRIs that patients with hair loss were taking.) The researchers collected urine and saliva samples from 818 male patients who were taking or had been trea