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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 Örebro University in Switzerland, who looked at muscle biopsies from powerlifters who admitted they were taking steroids at the time of the study. (He found the muscle fibers of these subjects had ballooned well beyond normal levels.) Mr. Kadi helped guide the 2006 Swedish study, which used similar methods.
The idea that steroids may have lasting benefits comes as no surprise to Larry Maile, president of USA Powerlifting. He says former steroid-using competitors who rehabilitate themselves often become top performers. "They're still bigger and stronger than they ever would have been," he says. There is no way to prove that they're still benefiting from their years of steroid use, he adds, but the question remains, "would they really have been that good had they never used?"
Charles Yesalis, a former strength coach and professor emeritus of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University, says athletes who continue to train can retain as much as 85% of their gains from using drugs. This isn't based on muscle biopsies or peer-reviewed research, he says, but on 30 years of experience with athletes. He says he has talked privately with hundreds of dopers, some of them champions, and has seen the permanent benefits of performance-enhancing drugs. "These things are like rocket fuel," he says.
While many sports have had athletes test positive for steroids, baseball has become the leading case study. In December, Sen. George Mitchell released a report, prepared at baseball's request, on the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in the game. The report revealed the names of more than 80 players who allegedly purchased or used steroids or human growth hormone.
The report included the names of several marquee players like pitcher Roger Clemens, who denies taking the drugs. Following the report, officials from Major League Baseball and the player's union have begun intensive talks on implementing a stricter drug policy, but officials say the league isn't considering steeper punishments. Baseball's current program includes a lifetime ban only for players who test positive for steroids three times. An MLB spokesman says the league isn't aware of the research done on powerlifters and hasn't considered it during deliberations. The players' union declined to comment about the negotiations.
Because of the number of current and former players who have been implicated as steroid users or have admitted to taking the drug, baseball is the only sport where it's possible to make some rudimentary measurements of the effects of steroids on a player's performance.
When the career statistics of 52 hitters who were cited in Sen. Mitchell's report (or have been alleged to be steroids users by other sources) are measured against the average career statistics for all hitters, there are some substantial differences. For the alleged steroid users, there was a 5.4% improvement in production from ages 28 to 34 based on OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) while the average for all players between 1921-2004 who played at least 10 seasons in the majors was a 2.6% decline over that period.
It's unlikely many sports organizations will impose lifetime bans on one-time users. Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, says he supports the standard two-year ban and says the new option for four years is good enough. "I could understand why athletes who are clean would want a lifetime ban," he says. "But we're comfortable with what the world has agreed to."
Nevertheless, WADA's Mr. Howman says that if science continues to confirm the findings of the Swedish study, a lifetime ban is not out of the question. "Never say never," he says.
--Russell Adams contributed to this article.
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 Örebro University in Switzerland, who looked at muscle biopsies from powerlifters who admitted they were taking steroids at the time of the study. (He found the muscle fibers of these subjects had ballooned well beyond normal levels.) Mr. Kadi helped guide the 2006 Swedish study, which used similar methods.
The idea that steroids may have lasting benefits comes as no surprise to Larry Maile, president of USA Powerlifting. He says former steroid-using competitors who rehabilitate themselves often become top performers. "They're still bigger and stronger than they ever would have been," he says. There is no way to prove that they're still benefiting from their years of steroid use, he adds, but the question remains, "would they really have been that good had they never used?"
Charles Yesalis, a former strength coach and professor emeritus of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University, says athletes who continue to train can retain as much as 85% of their gains from using drugs. This isn't based on muscle biopsies or peer-reviewed research, he says, but on 30 years of experience with athletes. He says he has talked privately with hundreds of dopers, some of them champions, and has seen the permanent benefits of performance-enhancing drugs. "These things are like rocket fuel," he says.
While many sports have had athletes test positive for steroids, baseball has become the leading case study. In December, Sen. George Mitchell released a report, prepared at baseball's request, on the prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs in the game. The report revealed the names of more than 80 players who allegedly purchased or used steroids or human growth hormone.
The report included the names of several marquee players like pitcher Roger Clemens, who denies taking the drugs. Following the report, officials from Major League Baseball and the player's union have begun intensive talks on implementing a stricter drug policy, but officials say the league isn't considering steeper punishments. Baseball's current program includes a lifetime ban only for players who test positive for steroids three times. An MLB spokesman says the league isn't aware of the research done on powerlifters and hasn't considered it during deliberations. The players' union declined to comment about the negotiations.
Because of the number of current and former players who have been implicated as steroid users or have admitted to taking the drug, baseball is the only sport where it's possible to make some rudimentary measurements of the effects of steroids on a player's performance.
When the career statistics of 52 hitters who were cited in Sen. Mitchell's report (or have been alleged to be steroids users by other sources) are measured against the average career statistics for all hitters, there are some substantial differences. For the alleged steroid users, there was a 5.4% improvement in production from ages 28 to 34 based on OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) while the average for all players between 1921-2004 who played at least 10 seasons in the majors was a 2.6% decline over that period.
It's unlikely many sports organizations will impose lifetime bans on one-time users. Travis Tygart, head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, says he supports the standard two-year ban and says the new option for four years is good enough. "I could understand why athletes who are clean would want a lifetime ban," he says. "But we're comfortable with what the world has agreed to."
Nevertheless, WADA's Mr. Howman says that if science continues to confirm the findings of the Swedish study, a lifetime ban is not out of the question. "Never say never," he says.
--Russell Adams contributed to this article.
