Welcome back to the real-life pharmacology podcast.

On today's episode, I'm going to cover five alpha reductase inhibitors.

Five alpha reductase inhibitors are commonly used in BPH.

That's benign prostatic hypertrophy, sometimes called benign prostatic hyperplasia as well.

And with the symptoms of BPAH, that can result from the enlargement of the prostate and really can impact our patients as far as urinary function.

It can exacerbate frequency, so patients with B.P.H.

Males with B.P.H. can feel like they have to go to the bathroom all the time.

They can have incomplete bladder emptying and urinary retention. The flow of that urine

coming out can be lower and reduced compared to patients without issues with BPH and can ultimately

lead to incontinence as well.

So how do the five alpha reductase inhibitors work?

Testosterone and particularly dihydro-testosterone, which is a more potent form, impacts the

prostate by causing it to grow and become larger.

That growth, excessive overgrowth of the prostate, can kind of block off that urine passageway

out of the body. And that leads to kind of the blockage of urine flow out of the body

and can lead to some of those symptoms that I mentioned earlier. How 5 alpha reductase inhibitors work

is they prevent the conversion of testosterone to dihydro testosterone, which again is the more potent form

has stronger activity in the body. Ultimately, what that does is by blocking that conversion,

it can reduce the growth of the prostate and actually begin to shrink the

size of the prostate and therefore alleviating symptoms.

Now, one thing that you absolutely have to teach patients, and I've seen patients come to me

and ask this. Phanastoride,

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