Myocardial infarction and anabolic steroid usage: a case report.

The potential cardiotoxicity of anabolic steroids is not well known. The au thors report the case of a young man who was a top class body builder and w ho developed severe ischaemic cardiomyopathy presenting with an inferior wa ll myocardial infarction. The clinical history revealed prolonged and inten sive usage of two types of anabolic steroids to be the only risk factor. This cardiotoxicity may be related to several physiopathological mechanisms : accelerated atherogenesis by lipid changes, increased platelet aggregatio n, coronary spasm or a direct toxic effect on the myocytes. The apparent sc arcity of the reported clinical details in the literature is probably an un derestimation of the consequences of this usage.