"What was most surprising to us was the magnitude of the disparities that emerged between sexual minority and heterosexual boys," Aaron J. Blashill from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston told Reuters Health in an email.
Upwards of 5 percent of adolescent boys use anabolic-androgenic steroids to enhance strength, athletic performance, and muscle size, but nobody had studied the association between sexual orientation and steroid abuse before, Blashill and his colleague Steven A. Safren noted.
Long-term misuse of steroids can lead to heart problems, hormone-related changes and psychiatric disorders.
Blashill and Safren used data from the 2005 and 2007 U.S. Youth Risk Behavior Surveys of 17,250 teenage boys, including 635 who were gay or bisexual.
About 21 percent of gay and bisexual boys said they had abused steroids at some time in their lives, compared with only 4 percent of heterosexual boys.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-gay-and-bisexual-idUSBREA1215C20140203