The Wall Street Journal reports today that the muscle gains from anabolic steroid use may be permanent according to an unnamed and unpublished research study from Umeå University in Sweden (”Cheaters Do Prosper: Scientists in Sweden Make a Stunning Claim: The Benefits of Steroids May Never Go Away — Even When Athletes Quit Taking Them,” April 4).
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.
MESO-Rx has identified the research as belonging to Anders Ericsson in the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Sweden’s Umea University. Ericsson’s doctoral thesis was entitled “Strength training and anabolic steroids: a comparative study of the trapezius, a shoulder muscle and the vastus lateralis, a thigh muscle, of strength trained athletes” and was submitted on October 6, 2006. The full text PDF is available online. Read more
