Recently, medical groups have issued guidelines recommending healthy older men to consider taking a drug that decreases the risk of developing prostate cancer, even if they undergo regular screenings.

The drug being recommended, finasteride, is currently used to treat male pattern baldness and to shrink enlarged prostates, doctors having suggested that men already taking the medicine for the aforementioned conditions should talk about long-term treatment with their physicians.

Back in 2003, a clinical trial called the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial showed that finasteride reduced the development of prostate cancer by 25 percent after treatment spreading over a period of 7 years.

Nevertheless, even though the men undergoing treatment with the drug had fewer cases of prostate cancer, an analysis found that they were also more prone to developing a very aggressive cancer tumor.

Still, a study conducted later called the discovery into question, the majority of the experts having voiced their belief that the finding had been merely an artifact of the initial study’s methodology.

The guidelines were released Tuesday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Urological Association and they are aimed at helping both doctors and patients, yet the latter could come to face a serious dilemma since they are faced with making a decision to undergo long-term treatment for preventing prostate cancer, which they may never develop.

In men, prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer after skin cancer, yet most of the tumors are neither aggressive nor lethal.

Moreover, despite the fact that finasteride has few side effects, one of these is reducing sexual desire.