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Hey, all, welcome back to the real life pharmacology podcast.

Thank you guys so much for listening.

Drug of the day today is dutasteride.

Brand name of this medication is avidart.

And this medication is a 5 alpha reductase inhibitor.

So with that mechanism of action is the class is associated with that as well. It blocks 5 alpha reductase, which ultimately prevents the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.

Now, most people think of testosterone from what you hear in the news, things like that,

and it has androgen type effects, muscle building type effects, those type of things.

But actually dihydro testosterone in the body is more potent of an androgen than actually testosterone.

So by dexteride blocking that conversion, ultimately we're going to reduce the action of androgen-type molecules overall in the body.

Now, where would this be advantageous?

Why would we ever want to do this?

Well, prostate becomes an issue, and prostate size becomes an issue as patients age.

So in patients with BPA, so you've got that oversized prostate, androgens,

potent androgens like dihydrotestosterone, essentially help facilitate the growth of that.

And so by blocking the conversion of testosterone to the more active androgen dihydro testosterone,

we can actually help to reduce the growth of that and actually shrink the prostate as well.

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