Graham's Member Story

My experience with Finasterid subject of article in Daily Mail of 23rd July.

Male age 85

In 2002 I was prescribed Finasteride to shrink my enlarged prostate. After a few weeks, I was alarmed to find I had breasts growing which were painful around and under my nipples. On consulting my GP she said to me yes we get young girls also complaining of similar pains. I stopped taking Finasteride and all appeared to go well, no pain and my breasts did not increase in size.

In late autumn 2018 I had a change of medication for my prostate and I again had pains in my breasts, my wife commented that my breasts were growing again. I consulted my GP and I was fast tracked to hospital to see a breast surgeon. I had mammograms and other tests and was told that no sign of breast cancer but if the pain continued to take Tamoxifen tablets for 3 months but first to wait to see if pain went away.

I January of 2019 my GP gave me a prescription for Tamoxifen, which I started taking. Within a month, I was starting to become very ill. As these problems appeared to be associated with my taking Tamoxifen I immediately stopped taking them Nothing specific but by the end of February I was suffering so much I consulted my GP and after blood test I was immediately sent to Hospital with fluid retention I suffered with all the possible side effects of Tamoxifen including bleeding in my bladder and after a while alarmingly my eyesight started failing, my optician found I had cataracts in both eyes which were rapidly increasing. No sign of these cataracts were found during routine eye test in August 2018. All my problems and subsequent illness due in the main to Finasteride which if I were not allergic to would not have given me breast problems.so no cateracts etc

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Hi Graham,

Thanks so much for signing up, we say that those who have been suffering with side effects for more than 3 months after cessation are sadly suffering with post-finasteride-syndrome. I am very sorry to hear of your problems with Finasteride.

We are actively working with the scientific community to find how we can best deal with the cause and symptoms of this condition. As you are no longer taking these drugs and it has been 3 months we would invite you to take our member survey.

The system should send you an email with a link to the survey but do ask if you don’t receive one. Taking the survey is the best thing that we can do as individuals as it is already generating clinically sound data which has never been recorded before. The survey takes an hour or so and you can do it a bit at a time - it will automatically save your progreas. Some of the questions are quite personal but at the end you will be asked if you want your survey to be anomymised so no-one will know who provided the information.

This is a generally supportive community, do feel welcome to ask questions and participate in discussions.

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Hi Graham, thank you for sharing your story and I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing these effects. It’s in our experience rarer to see older gentleman as severely affected by antiandrogenic drugs but it is not unheard of to us by any means. A member did report an octogenarian suffering similar outcome after two weeks of triptorelin, so I would caution against use of this should a physician recommend it.

As @Greek says, participation in out survey would be very helpful. If you are using a desktop or laptop computer, there is a bar graph icon in the top left of the forum which if you click will take you to the survey.

Best

axo

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