Response to Campbell et al on finasteride-associated suicide and depression in men treated for hypogonadism and impotence
The clear and concerning results in this abstract are statistically significant RORs for suicidal and self-injurious behaviors, anxiety disorders and depressed mood disorders in the finasteride-only group. The suggestion that combination therapy could “decrease” risk or have a “protective” role is unwarranted because the risk ratios are derived from unrelated sets of cases. This study seems to treat pharmacovigilance data as if it were a controlled, prospective study, when the data is uncontrolled and retrospective.