Healthy Men Should Consider Taking Prostate Drug, Doctors Say
The new guidelines from cancer specialists and urologists dont recommend men definitely take the drug, sold generically as finasteride and by Merck & Co. under the brand Proscar. Rather, it advises men to discuss with their doctors the benefits and the risks of the treatment, according to a study published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
An estimated 186,000 U.S. men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 and nearly 29,000 people died from the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute. It is the second- leading cause of cancer-related death in men and occurs more frequently in African-Americans.
The Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, conducted from 1993- 2003, found that men who took the drug finasteride cut their risk of developing prostate cancer by 25 percent compared with those who didnt take the drug. Doctors had worried the drug would lead to faster-spreading tumors in men who developed prostate cancer. Now most physicians who reviewed the trial data have determined the risk of aggressive cancers is “unlikely,” though it could “not be excluded with certainty,” according to the study.