Battle Against Bald | A Battle Against Hair Loss Through Hair Restoration

Propecia hides more than just steroids

In two previous entries we wrote about the masking effects of Propecia (finasteride) on steroid use.  Well, it appears it hides something else; prostate cancer.

A prostate-specific hormone that is always present tends to become elevated with prostate cancer.  The same happens with steroid use, and Propecia is masking this elevation in hormones.  Unfortunately, for those who unknowingly have prostate cancer, this could mean a lot worse than suspension.

Dr. Anthony D'Amico, author from the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in Boston, Massachusetts, along with his colleagues, has researched the hair loss drug's effects on the disease and says that it is inhibiting the detection of cancer until the cancer becomes more aggressive.

D'Amico recommends that men over the age of 40 should inform their doctors whether they are taking Propecia so that this information could be taken into account during prostate testing.  More sensitive tests can be used on people who do take the drug.

Pro golfer banned for testing positive for... Propecia?

That's right, folks.  Italian golfer Alessandro Pisilli has been banned from the Italian Golf Federation for having finasteride in his system.  Yes, Propecia.  He was banned on account that you cannot use any performance-enhancing drugs as a professional athlete.  While Propecia is not a performance-enhancing drug, it can be used to hide steroids in an athlete's system.

Prior to Pisilli being banned, there was no suspicion that he had been using  steroids; because of the masking effects of finasteride, the product is banned completely no matter what the circumstances.  When asked why he was taking the drug, Pisilli responded with saying he was treating prostate problems.  Hmm.  Maybe he was suffering from prostate baldness?

Other professional athletes have tested positive for finasteride, including American skeleton rider Zach Lund who missed the 2006 Turin Olympics because of the drug. French runner Nordine Gezzar and Australian soccer player Stan Lazardis are two others who have also tested positive.

Hair loss treatments: Propecia - how it works?

As men around the world become more motivated to restore their natural hairline and correct male pattern baldness, interest in hair loss treatments continues to grow. For this reason we've decided to further detail all the different hair loss treatments available.  If you're a regular BattleAgainstBald reader you probably know a lot about surgical  hair restoration, but sometimes we feel like we neglect some of the other treatments. After all, complementing your hair transplantation with another baldness treatment can—most times—add to the success of your hair restoration efforts. To kick off BattleAgainstBald's hair loss treatment series I'd like to start with the popular hair loss drug Finasteride, otherwise marketed as Proscar or Propecia.

We get a lot of questions asking if Propecia works. Put simply the answer is yes, Propecia/Finasteride does work. However, how well it works differs from patient to patient. Additionally, Finasteride is proven to stop, as well as prevent, hair loss from happening and does not claim to regrow previously lost hair. That said, a new study shows that 20 per cent of men taking Finasteride experience moderate amounts of new hair growth after a year of using the drug.

Manufactured by Merck with the intention of correcting enlarged prostates in men, Finasteride/Propecia was approved by the FDA in 1997 as a safe and effective treatment for hair loss. As the only FDA approved pill proven to stop hair from falling out, Finasteride is a popular choice for men in the early stages of hair loss, before the bald spots become more transparent—like in the case of myself and Torrance.

Here are few interesting Propecia facts:

• Like surgical hair restoration, it takes a minimum of three months for Propecia to show results. In some cases it takes upwards of one year before significant results appear.
• On the downside, Propecia has a number of potential side effects including:
  • Women, especially pregnant women, are not supposed to touch it as handling the pill while pregnant can result in infant birth defects
  • In some cases men taking Propecia experience erectile dysfunction. Don't fret—there are drugs available for that as well!
  • Most recently, Finasteride has been found to interfere with prostate cancer tests

Stay tuned for next week's part 2 of BattleAgainstBald's hair loss treatments saga: Minoxidil, otherwise marketed as Rogaine.

Propecia Commercial - Yay or Nay?

Here's an interesting commercial advertising the hair loss drug, Propecia. I'm not sure if it's airing on TV or if it's a made for web commercial; either way, I'm not a big fan. It's not that I don't get the message, because I do - balding men don't get hot babes and men with full heads of hair do. I think it's a silly way of conveying a message that isn't necessarily true. After all, we all know Deal or No Deal host, Howie Mandel, isn't hurting in the ladies department.

What do you think?

                 

Which Hair Loss Treatment is Best?

There's a never ending debate in the hair loss community about which treatment for hair loss is the best. Hair loss victims are always wondering what they should try to combat baldness; Propecia, Minoxidil, Wigs and Toupees, Laser Therapy, or Hair Transplantation Surgery.

In my opinion, there is no sure answer to the question of which hair loss treatment works best, results are dependent on the severity of hair loss and the amount of effort and money the hair loss victim is willing to use. With that being said, I found a great article detailing each hair loss treatment, which might be helpful in deciding which hair loss treatment is best for you. 

Hair loss Drugs and Cancer Detection

A study involving the hair loss prevention drug Propecia has been all the hype in recent hair loss news. The bald fact is that Propecia's active ingredient finasteride, can interfere with prostate cancer tests.  According to a research report released on Monday, men using Propecia could experience inaccurate test readings, which can mask the presence of prostate cancer.

The most common test used to detect prostate cancer called the PSA test, which looks at levels of a prostate specific antigen. Coincidentally, the use of  finasteride lowers a males PSA level; so an abnormally high PSA level could show up as normal, thus creating the possibility for unidentified prostate cancer.

The study, which was funded by Merck (manufacturer of Propecia), followed 308 men age 40 to 60 with male-pattern baldness. Of the 247 men who took 1 milligram of finasteride daily for 12 months, an average of a 48% decrease in PSA level was detected. 

If you're currently taking Propecia and are concerned about prostate cancer "you should know the PSA may not be the most accurate predictor of cancer." "Other tests, such as the digital rectal exam, may be of more importance," says Dr. David Quinn, an oncologist at USC who has worked on previous finasteride studies for the drug's maker, Merck & Co. 

Official Propecia 5 Year Trial Results

Hair Loss Talk today published the results of a five- year FDA trial of the hair loss drug Propecia. I know that a lot of Bosley clients (and probably hair restoration patients in general) take Propecia to prevent any further hair loss. It makes sense that you don't want to lose the old hair around the newly implanted follicles. Initially,  I did  a little bit of research on Propecia, and was skepical about using it myself.  Mainly, I was concerned by the fact the drug could cause damage to a human fetus (to the extent that pregnant women shouldn't touch the drug) and the possible sexual side effects. However,  reading the results of this Propecia FDA trial are pretty encouraging.

Five-year Propecia efficacy results

The studies assessed the efficacy of Propecia by four separate endpoints: hair counts in a one-inch diameter circle of the scalp; assessments of "before" and "after" photographs by a panel of dermatologists; patient questionnaires and investigator assessments of changes in scalp hair growth. The effectiveness of Propecia vs. placebo was demonstrated as follows:

Hair count
At the start of the studies, baseline hair counts averaged 876 hairs in a one-inch diameter area of scalp. By the end of the first year, men taking Propecia had an average of 126 more hairs than men taking placebo. This difference continued to grow, and, by the end of the fifth year, the net difference between the groups increased to 277 hairs in favor of the men taking Propecia. At the end of the fifth year, 65 percent of men taking Propecia (n=219) maintained or improved their hair count compared to their hair count at the start of the studies, while all of the men on placebo (n=15) lost hair count.

Before and after photos
The panel of dermatologists who reviewed standardized clinical photographs of men treated with Propecia (n=279) and men on placebo (n=16) at the end of the five-year study rated 90 percent of men treated with Propecia as having had no further visible hair loss compared to baseline vs. 25 percent of men on placebo.

Patient questionnaires
Questionnaires completed at five years by men on Propecia (n=284) and by men on placebo (n=15) showed that men treated with Propecia indicated a higher level of satisfaction with the appearance of: their hair overall (63 percent vs. 20 percent), the hair on top of their heads (59 percent vs. 13 percent) and their frontal hairline (48 percent vs. 7 percent). Men treated with Propecia were more likely to say that: their bald spot was getting smaller (61 percent vs. 20 percent); the appearance of their hair had improved (77 percent vs. 40 percent); they had experienced increased hair growth (75 percent vs. 40 percent) and their hair loss had slowed (90 percent vs. 67 percent).

Investigator assessments
Physician investigators who evaluated the men treated with Propecia (n=279) and men on placebo (n=13) at the end of five years determined that 77 percent of the men treated with Propecia had increases in scalp hair, compared with 15 percent of men on placebo.

Five-year safety profile
The five-year study confirmed the excellent safety profile of Propecia. In the initial 12-month clinical studies, the following side effects were the most common and reported by a very small number of men: less desire for sex (1.8 percent vs. 1.3 percent on placebo), difficulty in achieving an erection (1.3 percent vs. 0.7 percent on placebo) and a decrease in the amount of semen (0.8 percent vs. 0.4 percent on placebo). These sexual side effects went away in all men who discontinued therapy because of them and also disappeared in most men (56 percent) who chose to continue taking Propecia through the fifth year of the study. By the end of the fifth year, the incidence of those side effects was less than or equal to 0.3 percent in men who continued treatment with Propecia vs. men on placebo.