I’ve Taken Finasteride 5mg for MPB, And I Had Total Impotence and Penis Shrinkage in 3 Months
Hi doctor, I’ve been using finasteride 5 mg for MPB, but in the third month I had total impotence and shrinkage, i stopped, sexual organs returned to normal size hear some gain libido,but erectile Dysfunction persists even after 6 months ( no morning erections, or nocturnal) and and I also have pain in the prostate, what should I do? ( I used previously for 2 years finasteride of 1mg without side effects.
We never recommend taking the 5mg dose of finasteride for the treatment of hair loss. Did you increase the dosage on your own to 5 times the normal amount for treating hair loss, or did your doctor prescribe this to you? And if you took the recommended 1mg dose for years without side effects, why was your dosage even increased?
In any case, you should see a urologist. These are prescription medications, and I don’t know enough about you (medical history, age) to really have an idea of what is going on.
why would you take 5mg when your were fine on 1mg with no sides. if you thought by taking more than 1mg would be better for hairloss then your wrong. 1mg and 5mg makes no difference in hairloss. in fact merck even tested up to 80mg and said the dht reduction was about the same as 1mg. people stick to the approved dosage, and stop playing doctors and pharmacists on yourself
Your complaint is not unique. Others have complained of suffering from persisting erectile dysfunction and other cognitive problems even after quitting the drug. The doctors that have been attempting to treat this condition, with little success, sometimes call this post-finasteride syndrome. A few months ago, the FDA required Merck to change their warning label to include this risk and you will see this change reflected on the front page of their Propecia website. It is unknown what percent of men who develop side effects end do not naturally recover, so there is still hope.
It likely does not have to do with increasing your dose to 5mg as this is the normal dose for BPH and these problems have been reported at doses even lower than the MPB dose of 1mg. As Eli correctly stated, the reduction in DHT is similar between these two doses. However, the problems may be from another mechanism of action as finasteride does not just block production of DHT.
The “post-finasteride syndrome” is a term coined by lawyers who have set up a web site related to litigation against Merck, and is not a term found in the medical literature. While drug label revisions reflect possible side effects that have yet to be documented scientifically, for obvious legal reasons, there is a complete absence of good science that is publicly available in the medical literature (beyond an uncontrolled survey in 2012) documenting “penis shrinkage”, cognitive impairment, or similar things after stopping finesteride (and causally related to the drug).
This last post perpetuates some of the common myths that are spread by post-finasteride syndrome detractors. For one example, the following website references post finasteride syndrome years before there were any legal developments related to the drug.
https://blog.alanjacobsmd.com/alan-jacobs-mds-blog/2010/10/another-piece-of-the-post-finasteride-hypogonadism-puzzle.html
baldness will never be cured…
Side effects already decreased a lot, but still not gone, they improve slowly. And yes it was by increasing the dose, because previously I did not have any kind of side effect with 1 mg of finasteride. The reduction in DHT should be differences, because otherwise there would be two different doses of the drug.