Aug. 4, 2021 Dear Friends: For several years now, our patient manager, Philip Roberts, has been telling me he feels like Radar O’Reilly on M*A*S*H. Fans of the dark Korean War comedy will recall that often after endless hours of stitching up battlefield casualties—and having just flopped onto their cots—the doctors would be interrupted by […]
July 14, 2021 Dear Friends: The first study to consider and demonstrate gene expression differences as a potential etiology of the sexual dysfunction experienced by PFS patients has been published by a research team at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). In all, the PFS patients had 1,446 significantly over-expressed (upregulated) and 2,318 significantly under-expressed (downregulated) […]
June 29, 2021 Dear Friends: The PFS Foundation has launched a new section of its website to house documents from the US Propecia litigation unsealed by court order earlier this year. Part A of our Propecia Litigation Library (Paper Trail), contains 479 pages of such documents, along with 125 pages of related content, including Merck’s […]
Finasteride patients face a 51% greater risk of suicidal ideation or suicidal behavior than the general population, separate study demonstrates April 13, 2021 Dear Friends: Phase V of the PFS Foundation-sponsored research at the University of Milano (UniMi) has found that finasteride, a 5-alpha reductase (5α-R) inhibitor, also inhibits phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PNMT), an enzyme found […]
US District Court, meanwhile, orders all sealed documents in Propecia litigation to be unsealed February 1, 2021 Dear Friends: The PFS Foundation has filed supplements to its FDA Citizen Petition requesting that the agency “immediately require withdrawal of marketing approval for Propecia…because the risk of serious injury from the drug outweighs its limited benefits.” The […]
January 20, 2021 Dear Friends: The nation that gave us such wise figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Anandibai Joshi just got a bit wiser. With respect to PFS, that is. Now, speakers of the world’s third most popular language can read all about post-finasteride syndrome (aka “पोस्ट-फ़ाइस्टरसाइड सिंड्रोम”) in their native tongue. To […]
December 19, 2019 Dear Friends: France’s FDA-equivalent agency last week issued an Information Point and fact sheet for men currently taking finasteride for hair loss, or for those considering taking the drug for hair loss. “Developed in conjunction with concerned patient associations and health professionals, this fact sheet aims to reinforce patient information on the […]
Nov. 12, 2020 Dear Friends: Men 45 years old and younger who use finasteride for hair loss are three times more likely to experience suicidal ideation, plan their suicide or attempt suicide, according to a new pharmacovigilance investigation. Risk of such suicidality was 63 percent higher than among men using other alopecia medications, including minoxidil […]
Sept. 28, 2020 Dear Friends: Phase IV of the PFS Foundation-sponsored research at the University of Milano (UniMi), designed to investigate the presence of altered gut microbiota in PFS patients, has successfully demonstrated the presence of altered gut microbiota in PFS patients. Titled Alterations of gut microbiota composition in post-finasteride patients: a pilot study, the […]
Aug. 4, 2020 Dear Friends: Back in March, when COVID-19 first swept America, our patient manager was chatting with a thirtysomething patient who’s been suffering from PFS since 2010. Let’s call him Andrew. Andrew had recently run into a colleague from the last full-time job Andrew held before developing the condition and being forced to […]