Has any of you taken Flutamide for excess hair? If so, what was your experience?
Flutemide is coming into use as an antiandrogen with transgender women. It’s reportedly a descent antiandrogen, however there are serious concerns with the liver for that particular drug. Please note the following warning that comes up on drugs.com for it:
Flutamide may cause serious, even life-threatening, liver problems. Tell your doctor if you have a history of liver disease. Notify your doctor immediately if you develop nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, loss of appetite, fever, yellowing eyes or skin, dark urine, or unusual fatigue. Laboratory tests (eg, liver function tests) should be performed before and during use of flutamide. Your doctor will be monitoring your treatment closely.
Also note, it is not recommended for use by women.
I havent personally used the drug, but I know several on reddit in the trans community have. It’s also reportedly VERY expensive. If no one has used it here, you can try asking here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/
Seana
Thanks for the answer!
My endo presrcibed it to me for PCOS, with regular blood tests to check the liver/kidneys. It has only been 6 weeks, and I see no effect yet…
yes, that confused me a little. I know I’ve heard mention of it amoung some other transpeople, but when I looked it up on drugs.com there were dire warnings that it shouldnt be used on women at all, and I dont think it was entirely related to it’s antiandrogen qualities, though I didnt look that deeply into the reasons why. It does seem to be used in cancer patients frequently.Your own medical professional, is probably your best source for information. Always remember that as electrologists, we are NOT medical professionals ( other than maybe Dee who I think is still qualified as an RN) and cannot offer you anything related to a diagnosis, or rather, we shouldnt but instead you should be looking to the medical community for such information, who are aware of interactions and the ways drugs work, that we certainly are not aware of. An electrology diploma can be had in a matter of days to months training, whereas medical doctors get much more thorough training and as electrologists, we are not qualified to diagnose skin or endocrine disorders.
Because I’m really interested in MtF HRT I’d like to share that bicalutamide is a another nonsteroidal antiandrogenin (in the same class as flutamide) which blocks T (as opposed to reducing it). However bicalutamide is significantly more potent than flutamide, but in comparison has only a fairly minimal risk of toxicity. I believe in the whole scientific literature there are only a couple of recorded deaths ascribed to bicalutamide - and those were older males with cancer.
There’s quite a large number of trans girls taking bicalutamide now and I too am prescribed it by an endo.
Here is a link to the abstract from the first study of bicalutamide with trans girls - it has only just been recently published: https://imgur.com/a/rzy3Y.
However, the dose utilised in this study is too low to to act as a complete puberty blocker. For use as a puberty blocker the necessary dose has been calculated to be approx at least 150-200 mg/day for a trans girl close to first puberty, and who has T in typical mid male range for the age. However, for use as a puberty blocker (as opposed to use by trans women who are older), bicalutamide should still be considered somewhat ‘experimental’ - compared to say, cyproterone acetate.
But for trans women who are slightly older and whose T has already been significantly reduced to near female range, bicalutamide works very well at a dose of 50 mg/day or even 25 mg/day.
Also, because bicalutamide blocks DHT, it tends to both protect scalp hair, and assist with hirsutism too.