Finasteride impact on PSA level

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User

Posted 15 Jul 2024 at 16:45

I have been taking Finasteride for 9 months for hair loss. I am not taking it for my enlarged prostate as I don’t have any symptoms.
However I’ve now become aware that it will impact my next PSA test due in September.
Rather than have my GP have to adjust the result due to Finasteride, I would rather stop taking that medication now, which is 10 weeks before the PSA test.
So my question is: will that be enough time for the effect of Finasteride to reduce, so it doesn’t affect the PSA reading?
(I did ask my GP but he said he didn’t have the knowledge to answer my question)

User

Posted 15 Jul 2024 at 22:40

I doubt anyone will know the answer. Yes a few people around the world might have stopped finasteride at a comparable time, but unless you had a PSA result whilst fully on finasteride, at the ten week mark and then at sometime many months in the future you would be hard pushed to come up with a formula, and as the results many months in the future may be confounded by other things it really would be as good as impossible.

It's not like alcohol where millions of people every Saturday night carry out experiments to find the optimal dose.

The usual adjustments is to say, take the finasteride influenced PSA double it, and that is the natural PSA. My inclination is that any stopping and starting finasteride between tests will make any PSA result unreliable. The absolute value of PSA is not too important it tends to be rate of change that suggests further tests are needed, so keeping everything consistent for the tests i.e. not changing medication (unless clinically necessary) is going to give more reliable results than trying to get a finasteride free PSA.

Dave

User

Posted 16 Jul 2024 at 01:20

When Finasteride is used for treating enlarged prostate, the dose is usually 5mg/day, and it halves PSA readings over about 6 months.

When used for hair loss, the dose is 1mg/day, and possibly has a lesser impact on PSA, but like Dave says, very likely no one will know.

What you could do is:
Stay on the Finasteride. Your PSA is probably stable by now in respect to going on to Finasteride.
Get your PSA tested now and compare with the last reading.
Then test again in 3 months to see if PSA in currently changing (and maybe again in another 3 months to double check).

If you come off the Finasteride now, I think that opens up another whole can of worms about how that will impact PSA and for how long, which is probably more uncertainties than just staying on it.

User

Posted 16 Jul 2024 at 11:39

Many thanks, that seems like a good approach for me!

User

Posted 16 Jul 2024 at 11:40

Thanks for the reply.

User

Posted 17 Jul 2024 at 21:17

Has finesteride helped your hairloss ?

There are lots of natural foods and herbs to help reduce hairloss without the side effects of finesteride - some of which are quite scary

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