Topical finasteride has gained popularity as a treatment for hair loss in recent year. Unlike oral finasteride, the gold standard is 1 mg a day. There are wide range of topical finasteride concentrations used by people, ranging from 0.02% to 0.3% finasteride with 6% minoxidil.  So what is the best concentration for topical finasteride? Is 0.3% finasteride too high?

When topical finasteride was first started, it was 0.1%. The reason is very simple, 1 ml of 0.1% solution is 1 mg, the same amount as Propecia oral pill. 

That is why our products that requires once a day usage, such as Dualgen-15 With PG Plus and Dualgen-15 NO PG Plus, have 0.1% topical finasteride.

We also have a solution that requires twice a day usage, we lowered the fin concentratrion to 0.05%, such as Essengen-6 Plus.

For the solution that only needs 0.5 ml a day, we increase the concentration to 0.2% (eg. Essengen-F), because 0.5ml of the solution is still 1 mg fin. 

We also have a product that has higher fin concentration such as Maxogen-X that has 7% minoxidil, 0.15% finasteride, and retinoic acid at 0.025%.

There is a well known study that inveistigated a 0.25% topical finasteride solution on scalp and serum dihydrotestosterone in healthy men with androgenetic alopecia. Please keep in mind that topical solution (P-3074) used in this study is gel solution, which is different our solutions. In this study, 100µL, 200µL, 400µL, 1ml of P-3074 was applied to scalp for one week, and then the scalp and serum DHT concentrations were measured. It was found that 100µL (0.23mg) and 200µL (0.455mg) (used once a day) decreased scalp DHT concentration as much as oral 1mg fin, but they lowered serum DHT much less than oral 1mg fin  (~25% vs 76%, See Table 1 below).

That is the reason why many people believe a 0.025% topical finasteride is the best solution, because 1 ml of such as solution is 0.25mg, which is similar to the amount of fin in 100µL (2.5%) in the study above.

When one is interpretting the results above, one should keep in mind for a few things:

1. P-3074 used hydroxypropyl-chitosan, while most topical solutions available on the market including ours do not include this ingredient. Hydroxypropyl-chitosan helps form a film when the soltuion is applied to the scalp and it may affect the absorption.