Inflammation is a key factor in the extent of heart damage when an acute heart attack is treated with balloon angioplasty, one of the most common methods for rapidly opening blocked vessels that supply blood to the heart muscle.

The registry study, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that Swedish patients treated with finasteride for benign prostatic hyperplasia faced a lower risk of serious complications following an acute heart attack than patients matched to be as similar as possible in all respects other than their use of this specific drug.

Finasteride belongs to the class of drugs known as 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, which reduce the size of an enlarged prostate. The drug blocks an enzyme that converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, a more potent and biologically active form of testosterone.