14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine claim that, as surprising as this may sound, a drug commonly used to treat male-pattern baldness and an enlarged prostate might also help lower prostate cancer risk.
The drug is called finasteride, and is sold as either Propecia or Proscar, Live Science reports.
Recent reports have shown that men who took said drug daily for seven years in a rough were roughly 30% less likely to develop prostate cancer than individuals who took a placebo were.
“A 30 percent reduction in risk, with over 200,000 cases of prostate cancers per year, is a profound reduction in the number of cancers,” researcher Dr. Ian Thompson explains.
The researchers maintain that, all things considered, the drug is most effective in terms of preventing low-grade cancers.
“Finasteride primarily prevents those tumors that can lead to overtreatment – the low-grade cancers,” Dr. Ian Thompson says.