Creatine and Andro Popular Among High School Athletes - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

0 Comments | Family Practice News, June 1, 2000 | by Christine Kilgore

ARLINGTON, VA. -- Oral androstenedione and especially creatine are "in" among high school athletes trying to boost muscle mass and performance, Robert H. DuRant, Ph.D., reported in a poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

Illegal anabolic steroids haven't completely fallen out of favor, but the easily obtainable creatine and "andro" seem to have taken a front seat. And "kids are combining them," said Dr. DuRant, professor and vice chair of the department of pediatrics at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Of 1,033 male public high school students randomly chosen to be surveyed, 13.3% reported using creatine in the past 30 days. Fewer (3.5%) said they had recently used androstenedione; 2.5% said they had used anabolic steroids. Dr. DuRant and his associates conducted the survey of Winston-Salem students in November 1998, after baseball star Mark McCwire's use of creatine and andro had received considerable publicity. (McGwire, of the St. Louis Cardinals, set the home run record during the 1998 baseball season.)

Dr. DuRant, a behavioral scientist, said his study is the first such epidemiologic study. Both substances are readily available as dietary supplements. Studies done in past years have estimated that about 4.5% of male adolescents used anabolic steroids. It appears that significantly fewer adolescents are using steroids today and almost no one is using them alone, he said.

Of adolescents using andro, one-third also used anabolic steroids and 89% used creatine. Of those favoring creatine, 11% used steroids. Use of both andro and creatine was strongly associated with frequency of weight lifting; andro use was also strongly associated with the number of teams on which teens played.

Teens who felt that drugs and guns were available were more likely to take creatine. Teen girls were excluded from the analysis because their usage was low, Dr. DuRant told this newspaper.

The American Academy of Pediatrics' Section on Sports Medicine and Fitness decided not to issue a formal policy statement on creatine and andro after a literature search revealed that "there's not a large, credible base of data on the substances," Dr. Reginald Washington, vice chairman of the committee, told this newspaper.

"There's nothing to document their safety, so we urge extreme caution," said Dr. Washington of the Hospital for Infants and Children at Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver.

At Wake Forest, physicians "recommend to parents that their children not do it," Dr. DuRant said. "They're seeing lots of kids come in and ask about creatine in particular. They say their coaches are telling them to ask."