Abstract

Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are synthetic derivatives of male sex hormone called testosterone. The legal and illegal use of these substances has progressively gained popularity because of enhancing athletic performance (strength, power, speed, endurance and aggressiveness) and appearance (hypertrophy and making weight for fitness and physique). However, AAS abuse also prevalent in people who recreationally do resistance training. Historically, AAS were first developed in the late 1930s in an endeavor to treat hypogonadism and chronic wasting. Since the 1970s athletes abused AAS for high performance in such sports as weight lifting, body building, powerlifting and track and field. Now, amount of these drugs abusing has reached alarming dimensions. Many athletes acclaim that they will not success without them. While, above mentioned beneficial effects have not been approved by scientists and expert researchers and were questioned for decades. Of course, effectiveness of these drugs depend on many factors including doses, combinations of AAS, type of abuse, duration, type of training, individual differences, fitness level or training status. On the other hand, there is no controlled study showing that testosterone derivatives significantly increase lean body mass or strength in people. Few studies with a lot of limitations demonstrated that supra physiologic doses confirm the efficacy of these substances. One of the most important goals of sports is fair play in competition based on ethics and keeping the athlete’s health. Sport organizations and associations such as international Olympic committee (IOC), world anti-doping agency (WADA), and national strength and conditioning association (NSCA) reject the abuse of any performance enhancing drugs and substances in order to ergogenic aids. Because, these shortcuts is against sport spirit and induces unequal condition for athletes participations in events and competitions. Moreover, the athletes who abuse AAS, it is hard to continue training naturally.