Sale of SARM witnessing highs
The Internet black market is full of easily available and affordable non-steroidal and tissue-selective anabolic agents such as Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs).
The hike in demand is primarily because of the performance enhancing features of these SARMs, as per researchers from the German Sport University Cologne in Germany.
The involved researchers were able to find Andarine in one of the drugs sold on the web, which suggested that SARM can be easily accessed.
The findings of this study presented in an issue of Drug Testing and Analysis published by Wiley-Blackwell.
From News-Medical.Net:
SARMs represent a promising class of therapeutics for the treatment of various diseases such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and cancer cachexia. While none of these agents have yet been approved for therapeutic use, SARMs are gaining popularity in the sports doping community because they are believed to provide the benefits of traditional anabolic/androgenic steroids such as testosterone with fewer unwanted side effects.
In 2008, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited the use of SARMs in sports due to their potential for misuse. WADA closely cooperates with pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, as well as medicine agencies and drug evaluation bodies on the issue of therapeutics being misused in sports. WADA’s preventive approach was validated with the recent finding of a commercially available, non-approved arylpropionamide-derived SARM termed Andarine.
The issue was talked about a few months ago at the Conference of Parties to the International Convention against Doping in Sport, held on October 26-28, 2009 at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris.
John Fahey, WADA President, said that strict laws must be formulated and implemented by government agencies to prevent distribution and sale of steroids in sports events.
