Valmir Oliveira Silvino, Bruno Viana Rosa, Hugo José Sousa Sales da Silva, Marcos Antonio Pereira dos Santos

SUMMARY
Purpose. Androgenic-anabolic steroids (AAS) are a group of hormones that include testosterone and its synthetic derivatives. AAS are widely used for performance enhancement or aesthetic purposes. The use of these substances is well known for causing several negative effects on the cardiovascular system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, among other systems. However, the effects on injuries in individuals who use AAS are uncertain. The objective of this review is to investigate the relationship between AAS use and the incidence of myoarticular injuries.
Methods. This study was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA recommendations for systematic reviews. The search and selection of articles were carried out in the Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science databases. Studies conducted on humans, published between 1990 and 2023, in any language, which verified the use of AAS and the frequency of myoarticular injuries in physical activity practitioners and athletes, without restrictions on sex or age, were included in this review.
Results. A total of 120 articles were identified through a search in the Scopus (n = 43), PubMed (n = 59), and Web of Science (n = 18) databases, with one article selected from the references of the included articles. Two of the three studies included in this review demonstrated that the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids was linked to muscle or tendon rupture. This may pose another problem for AAS abuse.
Conclusions. The indiscriminate use of AAS might lead to muscle or tendon rupture. However, due to the scarcity of data on the subject, it is not possible to establish any conclusive relationship.
Study registration. The study is registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Review (PROSPERO) under protocol CRD42024576395.
KEY WORDS
Weightlift; AAS; muscle; tendon; lesion.