Treatment of hirsute women with cimetidine

The treatment of hirsute women is controversial and often presents a therapeutic dilemma. Mechanical methods (such as shaving or using depilatories) are safe but often unacceptable to the patient, whereas suppression of adrenal or ovarian function may not be effective and may have undesirable side effects. An alternative approach is the use of a drug that blocks androgen action at the hair follicle. Such blocking should be successful whether the source of the excess androgen is ovarian or adrenal. Because cimetidine has recently been found to have antiandrogenic activity, 1 2 3 we used it to treat severely hirsute women and assessed its . . .