Does spironolactone=propecia? Which is better overall?

[Healthy Nick]

What's the deal? If spironolactone totally gets rid of dht on your scalp, wouldn't it be as effective or more effective than Propecia? Any experiences?

 

[The Gardener]

That might be the case if you could keep the spironolactone on your scalp 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, that is not feasible.

 

[kiwi1973]

has there been any clinical trials done on hair growth with spironolactone

 

[Bryan]

Here's a scan of one of them:

http://www.geocities.com/bryan50001/spiro2.htm (Italian topical spironolactone study)

Bryan

 

[JesusFreak]

Dr. Proctor has said that "topical spironolactone works about as well as propecia," and as far as I know he still stands by his statement.

In my case, I obtained propecia results (moderate regrowth) from using topical spironolactone as a single agent in 1/3 the time (3 months) that it usually takes to see result from propecia. BTW, I got no regrowth from 5% minoxidil in a 3 month period of time a year before i started spironolactone.

 

[kiwi1973]

thanks Byran
had a look at that study could not make any sence of the results
could you?

so next question
if it works well for hairloss how come no was has done the all important FDA trials for it and heaverly marketed as a hairloss product like rogaine or finasteride

any ideas

thanks
kiwi

 

[BadHairDecade]

my guess is becasue it probably costs a lot of $$ to coduct the study. So even if it is proven to work the company who markets it has to figure if there's any profit in it competeing with all the other products on the market. All boils down to profit..... JMO.
Either that or it doesn't work worth a sh*t

BHD

 

[Bismarck]

BHD wrote:

So even if it is proven to work the company who markets it has to figure if there's any profit in it competeing with all the other products on the market.

BHD is right.
Take Dutasteride for example.
1.) Either it hasn't been approved for male pattern baldness due to the side effects that were not tolerable for treating hair loss.
2.) Or it wasn't much better than Propecia so the Millions of Dollars a real scientific study costs wouldn't be amortized.

BISMARCK

 

[The Gardener]

True.

With other drugs, such as minoxidil or Propecia, companies had exclusive patents on the substances as they developed them in-house. Thus, they could do the trials knowing that they would have several years in which they could sell the drug at high prices before generics came out.

spironolactone is ALREADY a generic drug.