The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7301 p681
29 May 2004

Comprehensive general review but a bit out of date

‘Anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs’, by Pat Lenehan. Pp ix+146. Price £22.99. London: Taylor & Francis; 2003. ISBN 0 415 28030 3

Hardly a month goes by without another drug abuse scandal in sport, and hardly a year without another book about it! The author is an acknowledged expert on the sociology of drug abuse in sport, particularly the anabolic steroids, and it is this subject that is at the core of the book.There is a comprehensive general review of anabolic steroids, though I would have expected more “new millennium” references in a book published in 2003. Sections on behavioural aspects, epidemiology, education and side effects are detailed and the contradictory evidence relating to behavioural and sexual aspects is analysed well. It was disappointing to find only a few sentences devoted to addiction and practically no analysis of the impact of the classification of anabolic steroids as Controlled Drugs both here and in the US.

A discussion of anabolic steroid action should have included the differential effects of anabolic steroids in different muscle groups, the different anabolic/androgenic ratios and the gender preferences for different steroids. The evidence of the positive effect of anabolic steroids in HIV muscle wasting was undervalued. Other drugs of abuse are reviewed in less detail, unfortunately omitting some of the recently discovered subtleties of action for which drugs are abused.

Pharmacists in primary care, particularly those working with addiction schemes, will find this a useful background text, especially the tables on individual drugs. As a standard reference, a more modern text is required.


Alan George

Alan George is reader in clinical pharmacology and director of clinical researcher courses at Liverpool John Moores University