A dangerous new vogue for the use of anabolic steroids as body-shaping tools by young women prone to eating disorders has attracted the attention of a congressional committee in Washington.

“Studies have shown that growing numbers of young girls are beginning to use steroids,” said Congressman Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who is heading an inquiry into steroid abuse in professional sports.

Some of the use was attributable to girls seeking to improve athletic performance, he said, but others were “looking for a way to get thinner, to reduce body fat — to conform to an idea of beauty they feel pressured to emulate”. Young girls apparently believe that steroids will convert fat into muscle and make them look slimmer and healthier.

Experts have warned the committee that a cultural shift in America’s view of attractiveness had led girls away from the super-thin model look favoured in the 1990s to a stronger, more athletic look highlighted on popular teenage television series such as The OC, set in California’s Orange County.

While experts differed on the scale of the problem, Davis cited a recent government study that suggested up to 900,000 teenage girls may have experimented with steroids. The drug is widely available on the internet and is increasingly sold by dealers supplying other drugs.

Dr Diane Elliot, a steroid specialist and professor of medicine at Oregon’s Health and Science University, said: “Today a lean, more muscular appearance is a standard of both beauty and sports performance.”

Elliot said her own research had identified two distinct groups of young female non-athletes using steroids. The first included girls with a record of other eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia who may have tried weight-loss drugs in their quest for a “perfect” body.

A second group used steroids because they felt unsafe or threatened and wanted to become stronger. Many in this group were from problem schools and carried guns.

Several of the experts complained that ambiguous cultural attitudes to steroids were complicating efforts to educate young people about the dangers of the drug.

Professor Linn Goldberg, a colleague of Elliot’s in Oregon, told Davis’s committee that advertisers were inadvertently encouraging steroid use by referring to their products as being “on steroids”.

Goldberg cited a boast by US Satellite Broadcasting, a television network, that its digital picture and sound was like “putting your TV on steroids”. A recent advertisement for Saab cars also compared a vehicle’s engine to steroid-
enhanced muscles. The title of the ad was “Saab vs Steroids”.

“Could anyone imagine a marketing strategy that [claims] a product is ‘on’ any other drug of abuse, like cocaine, LSD or marijuana?” Goldberg asked. “In our society, only steroid drugs are associated with being bigger and better and used in
ad campaigns.”

Anabolic steroids are made with synthetic male hormones and cause more dangerous side-effects among girls than boys. Both sexes face increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, sterility and mood swings.

Girls may suffer increased facial and body hair, loss of head hair, decreased breast size, a deepening of the voice and menstrual irregularities.

“These drugs predictably and sometimes permanently masculinise females,” said Dr Charles Yesalis of Penn State University, who first studied steroid abuse in high schools in 1987. “I never considered that use would have reached high school girls,” he said. “Unfortunately I was wrong.”

A study by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control found that 7% cent of 15-year-olds had used steroids.

Dr Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry from Massachusetts, told the committee that those figures included anyone who had taken steroid-based medicines for poison ivy, asthma or birth control.

But Victor Naumov, president of an anti-drug lobbying group, said steroid use had “entered a new phase [with] more and more teenagers looking for a quick fix for fat loss”.

Dr Robert Kersey, director of athletic training at California State University, blamed America’s seemingly insatiable lust for instant gratification.

“To take a pill has become the standard,” he said. “You’re hurt — you take a pill. You’re depressed — you take a pill. You want to look like [someone on television] — you take a pill. There are shortcuts, but you’re going to pay a price.”

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