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Merck's Drug Propecia Linked To Sexual Dysfunction
zaxios writes "Merck — the pharmaceutical giant previously featured on Slashdot for drawing up a 'hit list' of doctors that criticized its drug Vioxx, and creating a fake medical journal to endorse its products — is embroiled in a new scandal. USA Today is reporting on two new studies that show Propecia, Merck's $250 million prescription medication for baldness, can make men irreversibly impotent. Lawsuits have been filed in the United States and Canada from men claiming to have permanently lost their sexual function after taking the drug. All this is reminiscent of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, a once $2.5-billion-a-year drug, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in users."
Whether a drug is worth the risk for the benefits should be up to the PATIENT, not some damned ambulance chaser!
Right, and in this case the patients weren't warned of the risk of irreversible impotence, only reversible impotence that was supposed to go away after they stopped taking the drug. They weren't in any position to weigh up the real risks and benefits, and have every right to sue the pharmaceutical company for that.
...Propecia is an anti-androgen! Duh.
This is the correct answer. Anyone that doesn't understand this shit should be suing their doctor for not telling them, not the drug company.
Antiandrogens are only supposed to have that effect temporarily, while you're taking them. The significance of these new studies is that they show Propecia is causing permanent impotence - it persists even after you stop the drug. That is not a known behaviour of antiandrogens, and was not disclosed to patients considering Propecia.
Some anti-androgen drugs are not permanent in their disruption of the androgen system... Cyproterone, for example, is normally used to treat prostate cancer (and also used for hirsutism and baldness in females, and for MtF transsexuals (though AFAIK, it's not approved for that use in the US)), and works by binding with testosterone receptors, blocking testosterone uptake, which in turn causes the body to freak out and stop producing the lutenizing hormone, which in turn stops the signal to produce testosterone. Once you stop taking Cyproterone, however, the body starts producing the testosterone again, and normal sexual function should return for males.
Such a drug *could* be used to temporarily stay baldness, but again, as soon as you stopped taking the drug, the mechanism that's causing the baldness would start again.
Though there's another major reason that males shouldn't be taking anti-androgen drugs... you don't have enough estrogen in your systems to stay off osteoperosis without the testosterone in your systems. Females do have the estrogens, and transsexuals are taking the estrogens, but males should *not* be taking an anti-androgen for a prolonged period of time because the lack of testosterone will cause your bone density to fall... IMO, that's a far more serious life problem than losing your hair, but I guess some folks are vain. :(
obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, but I do know several people who are taking the drug in question, both to treat hirsutism and for transsexualism.