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Doctors, when prescribing medications, stay with medications that are FDA approved for the particular condition they are treating. That is because the FDA gives its stamp of approval that the drug is safe and effective for the condition that it is being prescribed for. The doctors have some restrictions in the way they use their medical license when prescribing drugs and their insurance carriers will not cover them for drug use outside the FDA approved drugs, so if something went wrong, they are bare for insurance coverage.

Let?s say that you are 21 years old, are prescribed Avodart (dutasteride) to treat your hair loss, and after 10 years of taking it you become sterile. That would not be good for you and you could take legal action against the doctor who prescribed it, which would not be covered under his malpractice insurance policy. For Avodart, there is no evidence that long term use is safe for young men and as such, it is not presently FDA approved for the treatment of hair loss. For the prostate, on the other hand, this drug is used in men usually over 60 years old who are statistically unlikely to be having children, so Avodart is approved for men with prostate problems.

As I mentioned in yesterday?s post about dutasteride, if you already had children / had no desire for children and had a vasectomy, and you?d already tried Propecia for a year or so and it was not working well, I would consider prescribing Avodart for you for off-label use. Other doctors might be more willing without qualms about it, but that is on them. There would be qualifiers that it has not been proven safe for a 40 year old man and it is not FDA approved for treating hair loss, so I would be at risk. You could also be at risk if you end up taking it for 20+ years. Usually, 60+ year old men who start Avodart to treat their prostate issues have a life expectancy of less than 20 years, so they may not even live long enough to develop problems that may not have been defined as of yet.