Finasteride Has Little Impact on Sexual Function in Men

The drug finasteride had a minimal effect on the sexual function of men who took it to prevent prostate cancer.

Some studies have found a link between finasteride and sexual dysfunction in men. But these studies were smaller, short-term, and did not consider variation among individuals when evaluating the impact of finasteride on sexual function.

Carol Moinpour, Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle and colleagues investigated sexual dysfunction in more than 17,000 men who participated in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial during a 7-year period.

Finasteride only slightly increased sexual dysfunction compared with a group not taking the drug, and the effect decreased over time.

Our data show that the effects of finasteride treatment are clinically far less relevant than natural sources of variability in this heterogeneous population and suggest that finasteride would cause little or no sexual dysfunction for most men who might take it, the authors write.

Contact: Dean Forbes, communications department, Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, (206) 667-2896, dforbes@fhcrcc.org

Surrogate Endpoints Inconsistently Used in Clinical Trials

In a commentary, Cornelis Punt, M.D., Ph.D., of the University Nijmegen Medical Center in The Netherlands and colleagues discuss the inconsistent use of surrogate endpoints in clinical trials and propose guidelines for future studies.

Overall survival is considered the gold standard endpoint for cancer treatment trials. But the time and money required to conduct a trial using overall survival as the endpoint has led researchers to consider other endpoints that can act as surrogates for overall survival.

Looking at 52 studies of phase III clinical trials of colon cancer treatment, the
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Contact: Liz Savage
jncimedia@oxfordjournals.org
301-841-1287
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
26-Jun-2007