All About Propecia

Research has been done with the male pattern baldness drug Propecia on women who suffer from hirsutism which is the condition that causes excess and unflattering body hair. Propecia which is known as finasteride in scientific circles is a drug that prevents the build-up of dihydrotestosterone in the scalps of men and it is a hair loss drug that can only be used by men.

The researchers felt that the finasteride may also have an effect on the excess amount of male sexual hormones or androgens in women that cause their unwanted body hair. The hirsutism condition can mean that some women will develop dark hair on their upper lips, their chin and even sometimes on their chests and back. This condition can be extremely distressing for some women as it looks so unfeminine and unflattering for women to have this extra hair on their bodies.

The research that was carried out by Dr. Brian Swiglo from the Mayo Clinic College based in Minnesota was a preliminary small study that involved the use of Propecia as well as the other drugs spironolactone and flutamide. The research project was done over a six month period and a group of other women were given placebo medication to ensure proper clinical results.

The results showed that only some of the women benefited from the use of Propecia for their excess hair and for some of the women the hair loss drug had absolutely no effect at all. The researchers concluded that they had only ‘weak evidence’ of the effectiveness of Propecia in treating hirsutism and that further research was needed.

One word of warning from Ukmedix News is that Propecia is a drug that must only be used by men. It can be extremely dangerous for women to use Propecia as animal testing has shown that it can cause birth defects in pregnant women especially defects associated with the development of the male sexual organs.

There are rumours going around in the world of sport that the hair loss medication Propecia which is currently a banned drug for professional sportsman will be taken off the list and therefore will be allowed to be used. This has not happened yet and sportsmen should be aware that they could still get banned from their respective sports if they use it.

Just recently the cyclist Jose Antonio Pecharroman failed a random doping control test and despite the fact that he was almost certainly only taking the Propecia to try and regrow some of his thinning hair he may well have now suffered from a serious setback to his career. The Propecia hair loss drug does not actually improve performance for sportsmen but it has been known to function as a masking agent for other drugs and anabolic steroids. The fact is however that it is very possible to do other tests to prove that somebody is using anabolic steroids which will show up even if somebody is using the Propecia drug. It seems unfair that sportsmen are denied access to the world’s most effective hair loss medication just because some tests will be affected by it.

Ukmedix News is hoping that the announcement that Propecia is to be taken off the register of banned and prohibited substances for professional sportsman will come soon. Too many sportsmen have had to make a choice between regrowing their hair and risking their career and many of those sportsmen who were banned for using Propecia had no idea that they were not allowed to use it.

Propecia which is made by the drug company Merck is the simplest and easiest hair loss medication to use. With Propecia all you have to do is take a small pill once a day and unlike many hair loss medications you don’t have to rub anything on your scalp.

The good news for men using the hair loss drug Propecia made by the pharmaceutical company Merck is that following ongoing testing over seven years it is clear that the medication is extremely unlikely to make men suffer from erectile dysfunction. The active ingredient of the Propecia drug is finasteride and it is also used to treat men who suffer from cancer of the prostate. In fact its original application was for this illness and it was only noted that at a later stage that men who used it suffered less from male pattern baldness and that it could even reverse the effects of the genetic condition.

The research that was done by the Southwest Oncology Group looked at more than 17,000 men who were over the age of 50 and who were regular users of the finasteride drug. The dose that men get to treat cancer of the prostate is a much larger does than is used for men who suffer from male pattern baldness, and it was seen that those men using the finasteride did not report more erectile dysfunction than those men given a placebo tablet over the years.

At Ukmedix News we have two observations to make regarding the purported link between erectile dysfunction as a side effect and the Propecia hair loss drug. Firstly over a certain time the body adjusts to the finasteride in the system and any slight erectile function difficulties are likely to go away. If you are using the Propecia drug and it is affecting your erectile function only slightly you should give it a bit of time and it should go away naturally on its own.

Secondly those men overly concerned that Propecia may have an effect on their erectile function may suffer from a psychological lack of confidence due to using the drug which could materialise in performance anxiety in the bedroom. Men should be aware that only in 1% of cases were any difficulties with erectile function encountered and many of these could be entirely unconnected to the use of the Propecia drug.