Athletes and steroids: playing a deadly game

FDA Consumer, Nov, 1987 by Roger W. Miller

Athletes and Steroids: Playing a Deadly Game

Politics and sports usually don't mix too much, but the legacy of just such a mixture some 30 years ago has left modern America with another serious drug problem--abuse of anabolic steroids.

The Russians provided the politics in the 1950s when they gave their athletes--both men and women--a male hormone called testosterone that apparently helped the competitors build muscle. As a result, they dominated many international sports events at the time.

An American doctor, who was later to regret his action, sought to even the score in those coldest of the Cold War days by developing for our athletes a variation of a drug that was related to testosterone. The doctor came up with a form of anabolic steroid for use by weight lifters that was supposed to build muscle while minimizing masculinizing side effects. The weight lifters who found that the prescribed 5-milligram (mg) pills helped build muscle assumed immediately that 10 mg, or two pills, would add even more muscle, 15 mg more yet, and so forth. The race was on.

Today, anabolic steroids are widely used and abused by young athletes in search of bigger muscles. This drug abuse involves boys not yet in their teens; high school, college and professional athletes; and body builders of both sexes.

A more recent problem, according to experts on the subject, is the use of anabolic steroids by law enforcement officers who are lifting weights and using steroids to make themselves more imposing to criminals. The Miami Herald, in a May 19, 1987, article, quoted a Florida police chief as saying more police officials should be aware of the problem, adding: "There's a great potential for an officer abusing steroids to physically mistreat people.' In fact, possibly the first misuse, or, as the medical people say, the first "nonclinical application,' of anabolic steroids was by the Nazis in World War II who gave them to their troops to make them more aggressive.

Steroids were first developed in the 1930s to build body tissue and prevent the breakdown of tissue that occurs in some debilitating diseases. But an FDA review of these drugs years later failed to find evidence that they were effective for those purposes.

Anabolic steroids can produce a host of side effects and adverse reactions (see accompanying list). They include liver cancer, cardiovascular problems, sterility, testicular atrophy, jaundice, and masculinization of female fetuses in pregnant women taking steroids. What's more, steroids don't mix with some other drugs, a fact that can add to the list of unwanted consequences. Actually, the total side effect picture is unknown, for it remains to be seen what complications will develop for today's iron pumpers who take steriods in large quantities and for extremely long periods. It is known that communist athletes in the 1950s were given so much testosterone that many of the men developed large prostates and had to be catheterized (have a tube inserted in the penis) to urinate. And some women athletes had to have chromosome tests to prove that they were really women because of the extensive masculinizing effects of the drugs.

Although the numerous adverse side effects of steroids are unquestioned, the drugs' ability to increase muscle mass has not been fully verified. The current AMA Drug Evaluations, published by the American Medical Association, says the evidence on the muscle-building ability of steroids is "equivocal.' Writing in the September 1987 issue of Clinical Pharmacology, researchers Michael W. Kibble and Mary B. Ross concluded that steriods increase muscle mass and strength "only in persons who are already weight-trained and who continue intensive training while maintaining high-protein, high-calorie diets.'

What muscle gain there is may be offset by injuries associated with use of the drugs. That possibility was noted in a Journal of the American Medical Association article (Jan. 20/27, 1987): "It seems likely that their use may expose athletes to the risk of injury to ligaments and tendons and that these injuries may take longer to heal.'

Weight lifting has gained enormously in popularity in recent years. Not too long ago, musclemen were looked on as freaks. As recently as 1973, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page feature on the U.S. heavyweight lifting champion under a headline: "Weight-Lifting Champ Frets as U.S. Yawns Over His Achievement.' The champ was quoted in the story as saying: "Do you think I like having people make fun of me?'

But that was four years before the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Pumping Iron' transformed barbells and big biceps into status symbols. The movie sent young men thronging to health clubs and gymnasiums. There they found out about steroids.

Knowledge of the value of weight lifting gradually spread, as athletes in other sports, particularly football and track, but also some baseball players, put on muscle to play their games better. It was only a matter of time before pumping iron--and using steroids--got into high schools and even junior high schools.