Dutasteride Has Been an Approved Hair Loss Treatment in Australia Since 2011?
Results of dutasteride trials have been nothing less than impressive, particulary the study conducted by Olsen et al (2006) indicating that dutasteride at both 0.5mg and 2.5 mg/day generated a superior hair count to finasteride 5mg at 12 and 24 weeks. Anecdotal evidence has also suggested that dutasteride is an optimal hair loss treatment; www.twinhairloss.com is exemplary of its efficacy, in addition, the many thousands that are using it for hair loss purposes. I have also been in correspondence with one of the twins in this study. He has been on a daily dutasteride dose of 0.5mg since day one and the results are astounding.
Additionally, dutasteride has now been approved in Australia as a hair loss treatment since mid 2011. Despite not being FDA approved, is the current literature and anecdotal evidence still not enough to substantiate that dutasteride is a superior treatment to finasteride?
Thank you.
I haven’t heard of such dutasteride approval in Australia as a hair loss treatment. I can only find a public assessment report from Australia’s drug regulatory agency (Therapeutic Goods Administration) dating to January 2011 about the drug being approved for treating BPH, which is what the US FDA also has approved it for. Do you have a link handy so I can read more about the approval since mid 2011?
There is evidence that dutasteride is superior to finasteride for treating hair loss, but there are probably more complications, such as loss of libido, with dutasteride. And more importantly, the subject of sterility is still an open issue as far as I am concerned.
I generally prefer my patients to try finasteride first, and if it fails to achieve the desired goals and the patient is aware of the risks discussed above, then I have written prescriptions for dutasteride after I’ve developed a relationship with my patient. It is on a case by case basis, though.
Dutasteride is not approved for treatment of alopecia in Australia. Similar to other countries (such as US), it’s approved for benign prostatic hyperplasia but can legally be prescribed off-label for other conditions.
I dont understand why people always want to jump the dutasteride bandwagon over finasteride. if a person doesnt respond well to finasteride then most likely he will not respond to dutasteride either. they are both the same class of drug, but dutasteride inhibits both type 1 and 2 5ar as well where finasteride only inhibits type 2. Just because dutas inhibtis type 1 doesnt mean it will be better. Type 1 doesnt cause hairloss, type 2 has been proven to cause hairloss. Merck the makes of propecia did a study with a specific type one inhibitor called MK 386 along with finasteride and it brought dht levels down to about the levels what dutasteride does and it produced no benefits on hair. blocking type 1 makes no difference. even the pseudohermaphoridites who where type 2 5ar defecient, had normal levels of type 1, and still had no hairloss. so jumping ship from finasteride to dutasteride makes no sense. if fin dont work then dut wont either. then only thing is that dut wipe out type 2 more than fin, but not that much more. fin wipes out type 2 about 85 to 90 percent and dut wipes it to 98 percent, I dont think a 10% difference will make a huge impact on hairloss. at the end of the day there both the same, except dut works faster, so in the long term most likely they will produce the same results. so why not just stick with whats safe. jumping to dut is redundant