Affiliation:
1. Department of Biosciences Institute of Health and Society, Federal University of São Paulo, UNIFESP Santos SP Brazil
2. Department of Diagnosis and Surgery School of Dentistry, São Paulo State University, UNESP Araçatuba SP Brazil
Abstract
AbstractSteroids stand for a class of hormones (natural and synthetic) known to be helpful for a number of disorders. Despite the aforementioned beneficial effects of using these hormones, anabolic‐androgenic steroids (AAS) are also widely abused in a non‐therapeutic manner for muscle‐building and strength‐increasing properties that may lead to genotoxicity in different tissues. The present study aims to understand whether genotoxicity may be a suitable biomarker for AAS exposure in vivo in both experimental animal and human studies. All studies published in PubMed/Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science electronic databases that presented data on DNA damage caused by AAS were analyzed. A total of 15 articles were included in this study, and after thoroughly reviewing the studies, a total of 8 articles were classified as Strong, 6 were classified as Moderate, and only 1 was classified as Weak, totaling 14 studies being considered either Strong or Moderate. This classification makes it possible to consider the present findings as reliable. The meta‐analysis data revealed a statistically significant difference in Wistar rat testis cells with AAS compared to control for tail length and % tail DNA (p < 0.001), so that the selected articles were considered homogeneous and the I2 of 0% indicated low heterogeneity. In summary, genotoxicity can be considered a suitable biomarker for monitoring AAS exposure as a result of DNA breakage and oxidative DNA damage.