The lost men: how Merck, GSK papered over bad outcomes in trials
A re-examination of clinical trials of finasteride and dutasteride reveals warning signs of long-term harms to surface later.
Research
The lost men – appendix
A summary of men who had unresolved and severe adverse events in clinical trials of finasteride and dutasteride.
How Merck buried finasteride’s full impact on hormone signaling
Merck held that finasteride had a simple and selective mechanism. In fact, it disrupts hormonal pathways much more broadly. These pathways support the brain, reproductive system and other organs. Merck’s selective account concealed risks which would surface in the decades after approval of Propecia.
A rundown of new bibliographies & research guides
The research base spans many disciplines and goes back almost 50 years. To help researchers get oriented, an on-ramp was added. In the Systems & functions area, a new bibliography was added: Adverse effects on skin, comprising nine case reports. The gynecomastia bibliography has been expanded. The bibliography on the musculoskeletal system has been expanded … Read more
Context matters: a rebuttal to yet another analysis of adverse events of finasteride
This post responds to a recent research letter: Disproportional signal of sexual dysfunction reports associated with finasteride use in young men with androgenetic alopecia: a pharmacovigilance analysis of VigiBase.
A tweeted rebuttal to yet another analysis of finasteride adverse events
A thread originally posted on Twitter is reproduced below. For an in-depth version, see the essay Context matters. See also a critique of three previous papers with similar designs, findings and conclusions. Twitter thread Nguyen et al, 2022 is the fourth analysis of adverse events of finasteride to appear since 2018. All four studies play … Read more
How was finasteride invented?
Although finasteride came on the market in the 1990s, the underlying research began two decades earlier. The rationale for the drug emerged from a study of a unique group of people in a remote village in the Dominican Republic called Las Salinas. Locals there have long known about children who follow an unusual developmental path: … Read more
Tapped by Merck for litigation defense, a physician-researcher sowed doubts about finasteride harms
A 2018 article disclosed that Dr. Kevin McVary had been retained as an expert for Merck’s defense in litigation regarding persistent adverse effects (AEs) of finasteride.1 Dr. McVary has also been relatively active as a contributor of three conference abstracts, an original article, an expert review, a quote in a media story and a symposium presentation … Read more
Responding to a literature of doubt: limitations of three studies of adverse events of finasteride and dutasteride
A fourth study has been published in the ‘literature of doubt’. Read the rebuttal. Background on the co-author of Baas et al, 2018 with a disclosed conflict of interest is here. Three studies analyzing adverse event (AE) data related to finasteride and dutasteride were published from 2018–2020 (the “AE papers”).1–3 The first to appear, by Baas … Read more
A proposed explanation of lasting dysfunctions after use of finasteride or dutasteride
Men who previously took finasteride and dutasteride have reported sexual dysfunction, anxiety, depression, cognitive problems and other dysfunctions which have continued long after stopping the drug. This paper proposes an explanation for how these dysfunctions may develop.