Finasteride

Active surveillance for 11 years. PSA went from 4 to 13. Put on finasteride two years ago.
PSA went to 5.5. No side effects and flow is good. Wondering how long one can be on
Finasteride? Can one shrink the prostate too much? Thanks.

My understanding is the same as Halbert's -- I was on it for many years. The only problem is that BPH can eventually outpace the effect of finasteride (and the tamulosin (Flomax)-- I was also taking). I eventually needed a TURP.

Finasteride has another plus: it's estimated that it reduces the risk of low-grade PCa by about 15% (although it does nothing for high-grade PCa and is not approved for use as a PCa-preventative.)

Djin

I am not 100% sure, maybe only 60%, when I was taking Finasteride, many years ago, the surgical oncologist told me there was a multiplier for your PSA. In other words my PSA was 15.0 on Finasteride. In reality it should have been around 20.0 or more. For some reason Please do not take this as gospel, and I don't want to alarm anyone. However, it is worth checking with urologist/oncologist.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16093979/

AZ Guy said...
True. I had taken finasteride 20 years for hair loss. When my PSA showed up at 3.3. I was told it needed to be doubled. My Pca journey began.

Yes, it was found early on that even the dose for hair loss (20% of that for BPH) causes a drop of about 50% in PSA.