Here These Idiots Go Again

[gusgold]

Finasteride linked to more advanced PCa...first they told us it was...then they told us it wasn't...no they say it is. Nalakrats was so pissed off he ate 72 egg yolks to show his disdain for these studies

prostatecancernewstoday.com...

Gus

[Spaceman210]

Couldn't this be because of the drug's PSA-lowering effect masking earlier diagnosis, as was reported in a prior study?

[jdm3]

“Nobody can eat 50 eggs”. One of my favorite movies.

[Break60]

This has been hashed over again and again! What the hell is going on?

[pjoshea13 in reply to Break60]

See my response to Gus. -Patrick

[pjoshea13]

Gus,

I ignored this when I saw it, since I couldn't find the study details, but here was my take on the headline:

Unlike the PCa prevention trials, these men were probably using Finasteride for BPH. This would tend to lower PSA.

From a 1998 Mayo paper:

"Doubling the PSA levels in finasteride-treated patients allows appropriate interpretation of PSA values and does not mask the detection of PCa." [1]

Do doctors do that?

I suspect that many of the guys appeared to be diagnosed at a later stage because untreated men would be detected earlier, due to higher PSAs.

But remember that in the PCPT trial, low-grade cancer risk was significantly reduced. PCPT did actually prevent low level disease. Which means that the finasteride population that did get cancer would appear to get more high-grade disease, when compared to non-users.

-Patrick

[1] ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/958...

[Break60 in reply to pjoshea13]

I still don’t get it. I was on finasteride for ten f....ing years for BPH. I and apparently my personal physician did not know my Psa was reduced by about half. So at bx my Psa was not really 6.6 but 13.2! And I had Gleason 4+5 stage ptb3 PCa not BPH! Whatsmore, my son has been taking proscar for hair loss and I pray he’s not now a future PCa victim!

I was not a happy camper.

Bob

[FCoffey in reply to Break60]

Your PSA was not 13.2, it was 6.6. The doubling is a rule of thumb proposed by authors of a paper, not an iron-clad scientific rule. AFAIK it has never been put to any sort of controlled test or trial. Just like the fable that the rule of thumb was based on the largest stick you could use to beat your wife, don't put too much stock in in it.

The trials show that low-grade cancers were certainly reduced by finasteride. That's most prostate cancers. So the drug helped a lot of men. It may have hurt a few; it may have hurt you. I took it, it may have hurt me. There's no way to know for certain. We all make the best choices we can given the information available at the time. Hindsight really doesn't add much value in these cases.

[Break60 in reply to FCoffey]

Ok but my Psa would have been double had I not been on finasteride. And when it was 2.7 two years earlier it was really 5.4 which was above the magic 4.0 which would have shown as above range and therefore problematic. If I’d had a bx then I might have been able to remove my prostate before PCa had left the barn.

[j-o-h-n]

That's why they say "don't put all your eggs in one bastard".

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Tuesday 12/04/2018 12:52 PM EST

[RICH22 in reply to j-o-h-n]

ohhh life is just one hilarious ride after another - thnx for the giggle! fight on, brother!

[Fastf250ps]

I was on Finasteride for years before I got PCa! My doctor said that, at least, it masked my PSA. F_ _k finasteride and it's parental non-generic! Hair and energy aren't worth it.

[RICH22]

i didn't go on proscar til i already had PCa - i take casodex+flomax+proscar and have PSA = <0.1, down from 14.8 -- not getting cut nor irradiated until i run outta options.