I’m Worried Finasteride Will Lessen My Chances of Having a Male Child!

Hello Dr R

As other chaps have commented – you operate an informative website but can you answer or provide referal to those who perhaps can. You cant know everything and yield a scalpel as well

Here is my situation. I am almost 40 years of age, been on finasteride since 2000, almost a decade. No significant side-effects and kept the majority of my hair. Probably in the next year or two, I shall conceive a child (hopefully a boy) but a healthly child is the main thing.

My questions to you

1. If finasteride has no real toxicological effect – why hasnt Merck released a study showing men who have been on the drug produce healthy children of either sex. I mean more the hormonal imbalance the drug does than the toxic effect. Hormones do play important roles even if that one causes hair loss.
2. Half life of the drug is cleared within a couple weeks or so. But how long would it take for the hormone levels to reach what they were prior to ever taking the drug in the first place
3. Is it possible to test for certain hormones to guage their levels to quantify this OR is this futile

My biggest fear is that the use of the drug would jeopardize having a healthly baby and also lessen the chance of having a male one!

Thanks for your unbiased opinion.

The half life of finasteride is about 4-6 hours so it is almost completely gone in 24 hours. There may be some tissue fixation that occurs and I would expect that it would take 1 or 2 weeks to clear that (just a guess). I can not comment on why Merck does or does not do something like gathering the statistics that go beyond safety and effectiveness (FDA requirements). You can write Merck and ask them directly.

I do not believe that there is any evidence of sex gender preferences conceived when a man is on finasteride. There is no evidence that babies are anything but normal when the father is on finasteride. We know, however, that this drug is dangerous for women who are pregnant particularly in the first trimester.