Anabolic Steroid Users — Another Potential Risk Group for HIV Infection

Abstract

As a physician who cares primarily for patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), I was recently asked to see an 18-year-old man with a two-month history of polyarthralgia, diarrhea, night sweats, and colicky abdominal pain. The patient confessed to me that he had taken several intramuscular injections of testosterone propionate that he had obtained in Mexico two to three weeks before the onset of his symptoms. A test for HIV antibodies was negative (as was another three months later), and his symptoms subsided spontaneously soon thereafter. The element of this story that struck me was that this man had shared needles and syringes with friends who were also using anabolic steroids. I had not considered such people to be a group potentially at risk for HIV infection.