Baldness Pill Doesn’T Help Women

Merck & Co. has bad news for balding women: That new baldness pill it’s selling only works for the guys.

Merck studied Propecia in 136 postmenopausal women suffering hair loss. Despite a year of therapy, the women who took Propecia had no more hair than women who got a dummy pill, Merck scientists revealed at a dermatology meeting in Belgium this weekend.

Merck announced Monday that women should not take Propecia, and that there’s no reason to continue studying it in women.

Balding women do have one therapy: the nonprescription ointment Rogaine.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Propecia in December, making it the first pill to combat mild to moderate male pattern baldness, the most common type. Studies indicate that about half the men who use it grow varying amounts of hair - and those who don’t grow new hair are helped to keep the strands they have left.

Merck warned at the time that women of childbearing age should not use or even touch the pills, because animal studies showed they can cause birth defects.

But doctors said postmenopausal women, whose hair can thin too, would be drawn to the pills. So Merck promised the FDA it would settle the gender question.

Scientists don’t fully understand hair loss differences between men and women. But Propecia works in some men by preventing testosterone from turning into another hormone that shrinks hair follicles - and women naturally have far less testosterone in their bodies.