Prostate & Baldness drugs may have sexual side effects

Two Merck drugs for treating male baldness and enlarged prostate will now carry extended labels to add more possible sexual side effects, US regulators said on Friday.

The changes involve Propecia and Proscar, both of which contain the active ingredient finasteride

The new Propecia label will include "libido disorders, ejaculation disorders, and orgasm disorders that continued after discontinuation of the drug," the FDA said. Propecia is a drug to treat male baldness.

Proscar, which treats symptoms of enlarged prostate, will now have a label that adds "decreased libido that continued after discontinuation of the drug."

In addition, both labels are being revised to "include a description of reports of male infertility and/or poor semen quality that normalized or improved after drug discontinuation," the FDA said.

Read the full story here:
US warns two drugs may have sexual side effects

Researchers Find Genes Linked to Aggressive Prostate Cancer

MONDAY, April 9 (HealthDay News)

The discovery of two inherited genetic variations may help doctors identify men at greater risk for aggressive prostate cancer, a new study suggests.

A man's risk for the disease could triple or even quadruple depending on the genetic variant they have, according to the researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and elsewhere.

Having a family history of prostate cancer is the strongest risk factor for the disease. As a result, the researchers set out to find DNA that is deleted or duplicated in the genetic information of men with prostate cancer compared to those who do not have the disease.

In testing the effect of the two inherited variants in a lab, the investigators showed that the variants helped cancer cells grow and invade, putting some men at four times greater risk for prostate cancer.

 Read the full HealthDay News report here:
 Researchers Find Genes Linked to Aggressive Prostate Cancer: