In the News – Finasteride and Dutasteride Don’t Decrease Cancer Risks
Snippet from the article published online June 20, 2012:
Finasteride use marginally increased the incidence of prostate and overall cancer at a level of statistical significance. Dutasteride use significantly increased kidney cancer risk. Dosage analysis showed that lower doses of finasteride were associated with higher overall and prostate cancer risks.
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The major limitation is the lack of important data in the NHIRD, such as prostate cancer histologic grades, smoking habits, alcohol consumption, body mass index, socioeconomic status, and family history of cancer.
Read the rest at The Oncologist — A Population-Based Nested Case-Control Study in Taiwan: Use of 5α-Reductase Inhibitors Did Not Decrease Prostate Cancer Risk in Patients with Benign Prostate Hyperplasia
This study seems to go against the grain of some of the original studies which showed some protective effect of finasteride in the overall population, however, the original study used the 5mg dose. This article suggests that the results of lower doses might be a problem.
I know I’m going to get a bunch of questions about this one, but I can not comment beyond what is in the article. I’m just presenting it so you’re informed.
Is this study saying it slightly increases the cancer risk *if* you already have an enlarged prostate? So, people with a regular prostate should be OK? I saw a lot of high percentages in the essay; I’m not sure what to make of them. I doubt it’s a 95% increase in the cancer risk.
Just hurry up and perfect hair multiplication already guys :/
This part is important :
“Finasteride use marginally increased the incidence of prostate and overall cancer at a level of statistical significance (prostate cancer: OR = 1.90; 95% CI: 1.00–3.59; overall cancer: OR = 1.51; 95% CI: 1.00–2.28). Dutasteride use significantly increased kidney cancer risk (OR = 9.68, 95% CI: 1.17–80.0).”
We should note that for finasteride the risk of prostate and overall cancer with regards to the 95% confidence interval included 1.00 (i.e. no increase in risk). This means that they are 95% certain that any increase would be in that range.
The results for dutasteride are more worrying as the confidence interval is above 1.17 in its lower range (or 17% increase).
Like they mentioned in the article, they havent looked into confounding factors, but still these results raise many questions like Dr. Rassman stated.