Role of finasteride in improvement of quality of life in male pattern hair loss

Abstract

Background: Androgenic alopecia (AGA) may be a common hair loss disorder with genetic predisposition seen usually in men. Despite the fact that the condition is harmless, non-life threatening however it causes a big psychological stress and affects the individual’s overall quality of life (QoL). Objectives: This study was done to assess the QoL in patients’ treatment with 1 mg oral finasteride withthe help of dermatological Life Quality Index (DLQI) form. Methods: This study was conducted within the Department of Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics with the collaboration of dermatology department at S. N. Medical College and Associated Hospital, Agra (U.P.), once taking approval from the institutional ethical committee.Seventy male patients were registered during this study, two parameters DLQI score and patient’s self-assessment score was taken to access the quality of life. The DLQI uses ten things concerning symptoms and feelings, daily activities, leisure, work and college, personal relationships, and treatment as dimensions of life, every scored on a 0–3 scale. The full DLQI score equals 0–30; higher scores showing bigger impact on QoL. Results: Evaluation was done on 62 patients (due to drop out of 8 patients)aged between 18 to 40 years with a mean age of 27.90 ± 5.43 years, the average duration of hair loss was 23.20 months , maximum number of cases were in grade II that was 20 (32.25%). hair growth was seen in decreasing order as the grade increased improvement decreased. 83.8 % patients (52/62) shown improvement in hair growth, in 2 patients loss of hair (3.2%) was seen, in grade wise analysis maximum improvement was seen in grade II and grade III patients. Average DLQI scores before the treatment was 8.76 ±1.13 which decrease to 5.29 ±2.08 after the treatment, this difference was statistically significant (p=0.0001). Higher the DLQI means poorer the quality of life.