Finasteride has no effect on prostate cancer survival

At the ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in February 2013, Goodman and colleagues presented a paper that summarized the long-term follow-up outcomes from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial. The original study was conducted from 1993 to 1997 and randomly assigned men to receive either 5 mg of finasteride or placebo, with the hope of reducing the odds of developing prostate cancer. Longterm follow-up, now at 15 years, showed no significant prostate cancer survival difference between patients treated with active drug or placebo. A subset analysis of men with low risk prostate cancer that had received finasteride did, however, have a better survival, although the cause of this effect was unclear.