Disability and deaths in men who used finasteride

Databases of drug adverse events contain tremendous variation. They include reports from patients of all ages, and many took other drugs that might explain outcomes. In this analysis, cases were limited to men ages 18–40 where the ‘Suspected Product’ field only contained finasteride (or, in the comparison below, minoxidil). This is only a fraction of total cases, but helps reduce the chances that outcomes were due to other factors.

This chart shows outcomes of disability or death where the suspected product was finasteride:

**Reported outcomes of ‘Died’ or ‘Disabled’ linked to finasteride, **in men ages 18–40**.** In the 20-year period, there were 52 cases with an outcome of death and 714 cases of disability without death. For cases with an outcome of Disabled (excluding death), 75% were submitted by a consumer, 18% by a healthcare provider and 7% unspecified.

In each of the past three years, cases with an outcome of ‘Disabled’ reached a new high.

A comparison with minoxidil adds context to these trends. Minoxidil is another popular hair loss treatment taken by a similar population of younger men.

**Outcomes of ‘Died’ or ‘Disabled’ linked to finasteride and minoxidil** from 2002–2021. Cases were filtered so that finasteride or minoxidil was the only suspected product.

Here is the same data in a table, along with the total number of cases.

	Finasteride	Minoxidil
Disabled	764	39
Died	53	3
Total cases	2,147	1,561

Number of cases with disability and death outcomes from 2002–2021. Men ages 18–40, 2002–2021. Suspected product = finasteride or minoxidil only.

We can also compare the proportion of total cases resulting in disability and death for each drug:

	Finasteride	Minoxidil	Ratio (finasteride:minoxidil)
% Disabled	35.6%	2.5%	14.3x
% Died	2.5%	0.2%	12.8x
% other outcomes	61.9%	97.3%	0.6x

Outcomes as a proportion of total cases in men ages 18–40, 2002–2021. Suspected product = finasteride or minoxidil only.

Less than 3% of reported minoxidil cases resulted in disability or death, while 38.1% of finasteride cases had one of these outcomes. Together, these outcomes were 14.1x more common in finasteride cases vs. minoxidil cases (ratio not shown in table).

Many factors influence the submission of cases to FDA’s database, so comparisons across drugs should not be considered conclusive. At the same time, the high proportion of disability and death outcomes linked to finasteride is a red flag that the drug may be dangerous for young men.

Further reading