Thread: 645% jump in steroid use in the UK

645% jump in steroid use in the UK


LONDON: There is a 650% jump in the number of people injecting steroids in Britain to pump up muscles - a move that comes with potential serious side effects like acne, hair loss, shrunken testicles, failed fertility, liver and heart problems.

Conservative estimates suggest almost 60,000 people aged between 16 and 59 in England and Wales have used anabolic steroids in the last year.

Many needle and syringe programmes have reported an increase in the number of steroid users particularly among men aged 18-25 in the last few years fuelled by the increasing pressures to look good. Needle and syringe programmes aim to stop people sharing potentially contaminated injecting equipment by providing them with sterile needles, syringes and other equipment.

A leading drugs and alcohol charity, CRI, which runs 21 needle exchanges in England, saw 290 people who were using steroids in 2010. By 2013 that number had increased to 2,161, a rise of 645%.

Research shows that people who inject image and performance enhancing drugs are at an increased risk of blood-borne viruses and bacterial infections - 1.5% such people have tested positive for HIV.

Public Health England has warned that men who inject anabolic steroids are also at greater risk of developing viral hepatitis.

They have successfully helped to limit the spread of infectious blood-borne diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis B and C.

In an updated guidance released on Wednesday the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended that commissioners and providers of needle and syringe programmes ensure services provide users of image or performance enhancing drugs with the equipment they need.

Services should be provided at times and in places that meet their needs, such as in gyms or outside normal working hours, and by properly trained staff.

The guidance also recommends that organizations develop local, area-wide policies to provide services that meet the needs of young people aged under 18, including young people under 16, who inject drugs.

Professor Mike Kelly, director of the NICE Centre for Public Health, said, "Needle and syringe programmes have been a huge success story in the UK, they are credited with helping stem the AIDS epidemic in the '80s and '90s. But we are now seeing a completely different group of people injecting drugs. They do not see themselves as 'drug addicts'; quite the contrary, they consider themselves to be fit and healthy people who take pride in their appearance."

"Our recent research suggests that levels of HIV and hepatitis infection among men using image and performance enhancing drugs have increased since the 1990s."