LAUSR

In their article, Motofei et al. [1] concluded that finasteride should be preferred to dutasteride for the treatment of male androgenetic alopecia (AGA) as it preserves (at least in part) important physiological roles of dihydrotestosterone (DHT) owing to its partial suppression of DHT, its adverse events (AEs) seem to be largely predictable and the primary (mental and sexual) AEs induced by finasteride are in some cases questionable and difficult to quantify. Dutasteride 0.5 mg once daily has been shown to be an effective treatment for men with AGA, with an acceptable and well-established safety profile. Dutasteride has been approved in Korea for AGA since 2009, Japan since 2015, Taiwan since 2016 and Singapore since 2017. There is also much experience of dutasteride 0.5 mg once daily for the management of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). Dutasteride has shown a superior efficacy to finasteride in treating AGA in a head to head Phase III study. The mechanism of this improved effect is believed to be due to dutasteride exerting a stronger inhibition of 5a-reductase enzymes, resulting in a greater suppression of testosterone conversion to DHT, a more potent androgen. However, the important data from efficacy data of dutasteride 0.5 mg once daily compared to finasteride 1 mg once daily in the treatment of male AGA patients were not clearly outlined in the paper. The 24-week, double blind, placeboand finasteride-controlled Phase III study [2] demonstrated that dutasteride 0.5 mg once daily was well tolerated and had a safety profile comparable to finasteride 1.0 mg once daily but with superior clinical efficacy in terms of: