Finasteride and the Frontal Hairline

I’ve read time and time again from your responses that finasteride does not work well on the frontal hairlines. Does that mean frontal hairline recession will occur regardless of using finasteride? or are you saying no regrowth would occur with finasteride?

Thanks

Take 100 people with a Norwood class 3 or 3A hairline and put them on finasteride 1mg daily. If they are under 25 years old, there is a small chance that some hair will grow in this area (I would guess less than 5%). The older the patient, the less likely that we will see significant hair growth.

There is a more important second scenario with those people in the Norwood class 3-5 pattern who are losing frontal hair. Again, in men under 25, there is a good chance (I would estimate at a better than 40% chance) that the hair loss will stop progressing or at least slow down the progression.

From the two observations, I think that the consumer has decisions to make. One of my sons with early frontal loss reversed it completely on the drug and started when he was 28 years old (he is now 40 and stable with regard to no hair loss). That says that all hope is not lost with the use of finasteride for treating frontal loss. It would take a full 2 years to know if it works. A bulk assessment in our office prior to starting the medication will have value for comparing before and after the 2 year treatment period.

Dr. Robert Bernstein has collected a large number of frontal hairline medication reversals, as have many other doctors, but cases like these are few and far between, despite this large collection.