Dangers, secrecy of use slow research on steroids
Dangers, secrecy of use slow research on steroids
Anabolic steroids have made headlines in recent years for their widespread use by professional athletes, Olympians and college sports participants to increase size, strength and endurance.
But as reports citing increasing steroid use surface, reliable information about adverse side effects of the body-building drugs, especially the psychological damage they can cause, continues to flow in trickles rather than waves.
The main problem in steroid research is that, because many users take extremely high doses of steroids, scientists cannot accurately reproduce the patterns of steroid abuse without endangering test subjects.
Dr. Greg Landry, head medical team physician for sports at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says some tests have shown that steroid abusers use a minimum of 350 percent of the therapeutic doses of anabolic steroids and often as much as 10 times the prescription amount.
No doctor or scientist could ethically have human test subjects take such high doses, even in a controlled lab setting, because of the unknown health risks, according to Landry.
While researchers have tried to poll users to obtain side effect information, the results are often suspect because participants aren’t always honest in reporting their steroid use.
A 1988 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry polled 41 steroid users from Massachusetts and California and found that five had experienced major depression after quitting steroids. Many others in the study experienced paranoia and uncontrollable impulsive behavior while taking the drugs. However, the study’s authors note that accurate results are extremely difficult to obtain voluntarily because steroid users don’t want to honestly discuss their use of the illegal substances.
Because little is known about the possible psychological harm anabolic steroids may cause.
