Serenoa Repens: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Serenoa Repens is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Sold as
- Saw Palmetto
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every serenoa repens product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Saw Palmetto.
What people report to the FDA about serenoa repens
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 679 reports naming serenoa repens, and the FDA flagged 81% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- fatigue73 reports
- dizziness30 reports
- nausea30 reports
- hypertension28 reports
- fall27 reports
- constipation24 reports
- pneumonia22 reports
- asthenia21 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean serenoa repens caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 26, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
What is Saw Palmetto?
A palm extract traditionally used for prostate and urinary support.
Can you take serenoa repens with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run serenoa repens against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
Is there a generic serenoa repens?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled serenoa repens product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Serenoa Repens: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/serenoa-repens
- MLA
- “Serenoa Repens: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/serenoa-repens.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for serenoa repens on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.