ScottAM
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Summary from the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120727718845788653.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today
Cheaters Do Prosper
Scientists in Sweden Make a Stunning Claim:
The Benefits of Steroids May Never Go Away --
Even When Athletes Quit Taking Them
By REED ALBERGOTTI
April 4, 2008; Page W4
Should athletes who take steroids be banned for life?
As Major League Baseball officials discuss ways to strengthen their doping policies, there's one possibility that's not on the table -- a lifetime ban for all players who are caught taking steroids. But a little-noticed batch of new research from Sweden suggests that anyone who takes steroids, even once, may effectively be a cheater for life.
In the study, which was completed in October 2006 by the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Sweden's Umea University, researchers took muscle biopsies from 26 elite powerlifters who have competed at the sport's highest levels. Ten of the volunteers said they were not steroid users, but the other 16 had either admitted using these drugs in the past or said they were currently using them. Not only is it unusual for scientists to study elite athletes of any kind, it's almost impossible to study top athletes who are using steroids in competition.
See an interactive chart of the performance of MLB players named in the Mitchell report
When the researchers looked at the subjects' muscles through a microscope, they made a surprising discovery: Rather than returning to their original proportions, the muscles of the steroid users who'd stopped taking the drug looked remarkably similar to those of the subjects who were still using. They also had larger muscle fibers and more growth-inducing "myonuclei" in their muscle cells than the nonsteroid users.
A scientific consensus on this issue may be a long way off. The Swedish study was too small to be definitive, and it's difficult (for obvious reasons) to do a large follow-up study on the effects of steroids on competitive athletes. Some studies done in the past decade have shown that while the muscles of mice grow when they are given steroids, they also shrink when the drugs are taken away. Gary Wadler, a New York University physician who consults with WADA on steroid issues, says he isn't convinced that the conclusions are accurate. "The effects of steroids are time-limited," he says.
The study, which is posted on the university's Web site, received scant attention outside Sweden and wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal. But researchers at Umea University presented it to Swedish doping officials and sent bound copies to both the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, where it made its way into discussions of the scientific and executive committees.
At a meeting in Madrid in November, WADA's Foundation Board voted to change its code to allow for a maximum four-year ban for first-time offenders caught using performance-enhancing drugs. The new ban, which goes into effect in all sanctioned Olympic events in 2009, is a severe penalty for athletes -- whose careers tend to be short. Bengt Eriksson, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Sport Confederation's doping commission, who attended the Madrid conference, says he thinks the study was "one of the main reasons" WADA raised the maximum penalty. David Howman, WADA's director general, says the Swedish study played only a minor role in the decision. In any case, the study affirmed something a handful of scientists, athletes and strength coaches have long believed -- that steroids change you forever.
The scientific understanding of steroids took a giant leap forward in 1996 when Shalender Bhasin, now chief of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at the Boston Medical Center, published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded, to the surprise of many, that steroids have a profound impact on muscle cells -- even in people who take them without lifting weights. The Swedish study was inspired by a study in 1999 by Fawzi Kadi, a physiology professor at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120727718845788653.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today
Cheaters Do Prosper
Scientists in Sweden Make a Stunning Claim:
The Benefits of Steroids May Never Go Away --
Even When Athletes Quit Taking Them
By REED ALBERGOTTI
April 4, 2008; Page W4
Should athletes who take steroids be banned for life?
As Major League Baseball officials discuss ways to strengthen their doping policies, there's one possibility that's not on the table -- a lifetime ban for all players who are caught taking steroids. But a little-noticed batch of new research from Sweden suggests that anyone who takes steroids, even once, may effectively be a cheater for life.
In the study, which was completed in October 2006 by the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Sweden's Umea University, researchers took muscle biopsies from 26 elite powerlifters who have competed at the sport's highest levels. Ten of the volunteers said they were not steroid users, but the other 16 had either admitted using these drugs in the past or said they were currently using them. Not only is it unusual for scientists to study elite athletes of any kind, it's almost impossible to study top athletes who are using steroids in competition.
See an interactive chart of the performance of MLB players named in the Mitchell report
When the researchers looked at the subjects' muscles through a microscope, they made a surprising discovery: Rather than returning to their original proportions, the muscles of the steroid users who'd stopped taking the drug looked remarkably similar to those of the subjects who were still using. They also had larger muscle fibers and more growth-inducing "myonuclei" in their muscle cells than the nonsteroid users.
A scientific consensus on this issue may be a long way off. The Swedish study was too small to be definitive, and it's difficult (for obvious reasons) to do a large follow-up study on the effects of steroids on competitive athletes. Some studies done in the past decade have shown that while the muscles of mice grow when they are given steroids, they also shrink when the drugs are taken away. Gary Wadler, a New York University physician who consults with WADA on steroid issues, says he isn't convinced that the conclusions are accurate. "The effects of steroids are time-limited," he says.
The study, which is posted on the university's Web site, received scant attention outside Sweden and wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal. But researchers at Umea University presented it to Swedish doping officials and sent bound copies to both the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, where it made its way into discussions of the scientific and executive committees.
At a meeting in Madrid in November, WADA's Foundation Board voted to change its code to allow for a maximum four-year ban for first-time offenders caught using performance-enhancing drugs. The new ban, which goes into effect in all sanctioned Olympic events in 2009, is a severe penalty for athletes -- whose careers tend to be short. Bengt Eriksson, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Sport Confederation's doping commission, who attended the Madrid conference, says he thinks the study was "one of the main reasons" WADA raised the maximum penalty. David Howman, WADA's director general, says the Swedish study played only a minor role in the decision. In any case, the study affirmed something a handful of scientists, athletes and strength coaches have long believed -- that steroids change you forever.
The scientific understanding of steroids took a giant leap forward in 1996 when Shalender Bhasin, now chief of endocrinology, diabetes and nutrition at the Boston Medical Center, published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that concluded, to the surprise of many, that steroids have a profound impact on muscle cells -- even in people who take them without lifting weights. The Swedish study was inspired by a study in 1999 by Fawzi Kadi, a physiology professor at
