Just Because a Substance is ‘Banned’ Doesn’t Mean Your Patient Isn’t Suffering Its Ill Effects

Many substances purported to help boost workouts by giving the user more energy or helping to speed development of muscle mass have been the subject of warnings or outright bans by health departments at the state and federal levels in the United States. That doesn’t mean they’re not available, however, as underscored in a study published recently in Clinical Toxicology. The authors found that 17 brands of over-the-country supplements available online in the U.S. contained deterenol, a beta-agonist that the Food and Drug Administration banned from supplements in 2004. They also found that those products, collectively, contained nine stimulants that are not allowed in supplements—with some including combinations of banned subtances. The cover article in the April issue of JUCM addresses this topic in the context of patients presenting to urgent care with possible detrimental side effects of ingesting banned substances. You can read Building the Body Up Just to Break the Body Down: A Look Into Black Market Substance Use Among Young Athletes and Body Builders (and receive CME credit for doing so) online right now.