Sexual Side Effects of Hair-Loss Drug

Allure Daily Beauty Reporter

Kate Sullivan,Allure magazine

The hushed and hurried voice listing a drug's many side effects at the end of a commercial always makes my ears perk up. "May cause sleep-fighting...." Wait, did she just say sleep-fighting? Is that a thing? But I am also mostly assured that while these side effects exist, they're probably not that common. (Two people sleep-fight while on this medication, and now the company has to mention it. I mean, maybe they would have sleep-fought anyway. I don't know their lives). But perhaps I'm taking the warnings a little too lightly-and maybe bald dudes are, too.A recent study at George Washington University has found that the sexual side effects of the hair-loss drug Propecia can last for months, even years, after a man stops taking the drug. Um, yikes.

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The study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, was given the Cliff Notes treatment by ABC News. Here are the deets: Fifty-four men under age 40 who had already been showing sexual, medical, and psychiatric troubles for three months or more after taking Propecia had their symptoms tracked by researchers. Some men had been on the drug for years, others mere weeks before stopping, but all reported either erectile dysfunction, decreased sex drive, shrinking genitals, or some combination of this un-fun bunch of symptoms. And 96 percent of the men said these sexual problems lasted more than a year after they had ceased taking Propecia.

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Over 13 years, Merck, the company that makes Propecia, has received 400 reports of sexual dysfunction, with approximately 60 men reporting that this side effect didn't go away until months after they stopped using the drug. Two FDA mandates said 1) that the company would have to warn patients of the possibility that the side effects could persist, and 2) that they'd have to really spell out the various specifics covered under "sexual dysfunction," including low libido and ejaculation disorders.

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The fact is, 36 of 945 men showed such symptoms in Propecia's clinical trials, coming out to a seemingly tiny 3 percent. But as the author of this new study, Dr. Michael Irwig, points out: "Because the medication is prescribed so commonly, it's still a lot of people, likely several thousand men around the world." What seems small on paper is big in reality to the men whose lives are side-effected by this. (Incidentally, it appears there will be more research into the psychological side effects of finasteride, the active ingredient in Propecia, as less is known about them.)

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