The popular hair loss drug use as a masking agent for its parallel for other banned substances has been taken off the WADA or World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list, according to WADA said Monday.

Finasteride, prescribed as to slow the process of hair loss, has been removed from WADA’s 2009 banned list because the scientists can now more easily detect the drugs it can be used to masks. But it was added to the banned list in 2005 after research at Cologne, German Laboratory revealed that it can mask the use of certain steroids like Nandrolone.

Olivier Rabin, a WADA’s Chief of Medical Research said “science did not allow laboratories to reliably circumvent the masking properties of finasteride and other alpha reductive inhibitors. The masking effect of alpha reductive inhibitors remains. However following recent advances in anti-doping science, anti-doping laboratories have now been able to render it ineffective through close consideration of steroid profiles”.

As the result WADA agreed that the class of substances can now be removed from the List starting on January 1, 2009. In the past four years, almost a dozen athletes have tested positive for finasteride, whom possessed a Therapeutic Use Exemption from the medical authorities that would have allowed them the sanctions to escape.

Last 2007, Romario a Brizilian footballer was banned 120 days because for testing positive finasteride. He claimed he had taken the drug to preven hair loss.