Risk of acute pancreatitis in users of finasteride: a population-based case-control study

To examine the risk of acute pancreatitis in > or = 60-year-old male users of finasteride in a case-control study from a population of 490,000 persons in North Jutland County, Denmark, from 1993 to 2000.

We identified all men age 60 and over with incident acute pancreatitis from the County Hospital Discharge Registry in North Jutland, 1993 to 2000, and selected 10 age-matched controls per case from the Danish Civil Registration System based on incidence density sampling. All prescriptions for finasteride within 90 days prior to admission with acute pancreatitis were identified from the population-based North Jutland Prescription Database. Data on potential confounding factors were also extracted from registries. We used conditional logistic regression to estimate the relative risk of acute pancreatitis, adjusted for these potential confounders.

There were 302 men age 60 and older with incident acute pancreatitis, of whom 3 were exposed to finasteride, and 2994 controls, of whom 37 were exposed to finasteride. The crude odds ratio for having reimbursed prescriptions for finasteride was 0.8 (95% confidence interval, 0.2-2.6). After adjustment for alcohol-related diseases, gallstone disease, hyperlipidemia, hypercalcemia, and hyperparathyroidism, the odds ratio was slightly decreased to 0.5 (95% confidence interval, 0.1-2.5).

We did not find any increased risk of acute pancreatitis in users of finasteride.