I'm just pasting badassblue's post here. This is what you want to do if you're trying to transition to female or treat active prostate cancer. It might be debatable how real these effects are in practice but I don't want to touch anti-androgens with a ten foot pole after my accutane experience.
It has been shown in in vitro
[29],
[31]-
[33] and in vivo studies
[26],
[57] that DIM has an anti-androgen effect which downregulates AR and PSA. In androgen-dependent LNCaP cells, DIM suppresses cell proliferation, inhibits DHT stimulation of DNA synthesis and endogenous PSA transcription and suppresses androgen-induced AR translocation into the nucleus
[81]. Similar effects of DIM were observed in PC-3 cells only when these cells were co-transfected with a wild-type androgen receptor expression plasmid
[82].
DIM results in cell cycle arrest in androgen-sensitive LNCaP cells and androgen-insensitive C4-2B cells not only by affecting cell cycle regulatory molecules including cdks and their inhibitors but also by downregulating AR
[31]. In the same cell lines, DIM was found to promote cell cycle arrest and cause apoptosis that may be associated with effects on Akt and AR signaling pathways by affecting Akt/FOXO3a/GSK-3β/β-catenin signaling
[46]. In a separate study, the same research group found that B-DIM's anti-androgenic effects were associated with inhibition of AR phosphorylation, AR expressions and AR nuclear translocation, leading to the down-regulation of AR target genes
[32]. The anti-androgen effect from DIM is not associated with prostate cancer cell's androgen status
[29]. The results of structural modeling studies showed that DIM is remarkably similar in conformational geometry and surface charge distribution to an established synthetic AR antagonist
[81]. These observations provide rationales for DIM in treating hormone-sensitive, but more importantly hormone-refractory prostate cancer by using DIM alone or combining with other therapeutics
[3
