Steroid use by teens rose steadily in the 1990s, according to Monitoring the Future, a federally funded annual survey of teens' drug use by the University of Michigan. In 2002, 3 percent of twelfth graders reported they had taken anabolic steroids at least once, compared with 2 percent of twelfth graders surveyed in 1991.
Anabolic steroids can cause permanent damage to the heart, liver and kidneys along with other physical and psychiatric side effects, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) says. Little is known about steroidal supplements (creatine and androstenedione), but they are likely to produce the same side effects as steroids if they substantially increase testosterone levels in the body.
Anabolic steroid use is probably widespread among athletes and would-be sports competitors at all levels, although few data are available to provide exact estimates of prevalence, NIDA says. Many anabolic steroid abusers are unwilling to report the practice, because the International Olympic Committee and many other amateur and professional sports organizations have banned anabolic steroids.
Anabolic steroid use is increasing among adolescents, and most rapidly among females. The 1999 Monitoring the Future study, a NIDA-funded survey of drug abuse among middle school and high school students across the United States, recorded that 2.7 percent of 8th-graders, 2.7 percent of 10th-graders and 2.9 percent of 12th-graders reported having taken anabolic steroids at least once in their lives. These figures represent increases since 1991 of approximately 50 percent among 8th- and 10th-graders and 38 percent among 12th-graders.
A new success
Seeking to reverse the rising use of steroids, researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) say they have developed two unique programs, the ATLAS program for boys and the ATHENA program for girls. ATLAS and ATHENA use the positive influence of coaches and peers to help athletes work toward healthy goals. Both programs are implemented within the sport team, where coaches and teammates, who often have years of ongoing contact, greatly influence health behaviors. Positive peer and coach pressure and engaging youth in interactive, entertaining activities make learning fun. These programs have undergone randomized controlled evaluations involving more than 4,000 student-athletes and tested in more than 50 high schools. The results of the programs are published in leading medical journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Warning signs of steroid use
Anabolic steroids contain synthetic substances related to testosterone (the male sex hormone) and come in oral or injectable forms. A user typically takes several different types of steroids in multiple doses for a specific period of time, and then stops for a set period of time before starting again.
The warning signs of steroid use include:
- Increased irritability and aggression and other behavioral changes, such as euphoria, increased energy, sexual arousal, mood swings, distractibility, forgetfulness, confusion and depression
- In males, shrinking of the testicles, difficulty or pain in urinating, baldness and breast enlargement
- In females, development of masculine characteristics, such as decreased body fat and breast size, deepening of the voice, excessive growth of body hair and loss of scalp hair
- Severe acne and stunting of bone growth
- Jaundice (yellowing of the whites of the eyes), fluid retention, high blood pressure, increases in LDL (bad cholesterol) and decreases in HDL (good cholesterol)
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External Sources
 | National Institute on Drug Abuse
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| Oregon Health and Science University
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This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
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