{"id":405856,"date":"2026-04-19T00:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/405856\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T00:11:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:11:11","slug":"steroids-and-the-silent-cancer-plaguing-the-manosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/405856\/","title":{"rendered":"Steroids and the \u2018silent\u2019 cancer plaguing the manosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

The patient, to look at him, was in the prime of his life: in his late thirties, fit and toned from hours spent in the gym.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the scans told a different story. Growing on his liver was a malignant tumour the size of a bowling ball. The obsession that had given him his chiselled physique had handed him a death sentence. The patient \u2014 like thousands of other gymgoers in the UK \u2014 had been taking anabolic steroids.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cancer was inoperable. There was nothing his doctors could do for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis life expectancy is probably about six or seven months,\u201d said Stephen Wigmore, regius professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh. This was not the first young man whom Wigmore, who is also the head of surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, had treated for liver cancer after heavy steroid use.<\/p>\n

\"ProfessorProfessor Steven Wigmore<\/p>\n

He said the illegal trade in steroids in gyms, taken by predominantly young men pursuing the ideal of a masculine body, had created a \u201csilent killer\u201d. And he said this was encouraged by social media and the \u201cmanosphere\u201d \u2014 a loose collection of online influencers and chat forums pushing misogynistic views and a new idea of masculinity. <\/p>\n

A new debate about the manosphere has arisen since the documentary maker Louis Theroux released a Netflix film<\/a> about the phenomenon last month. <\/p>\n

But Wigmore said the debate had neglected the risk of liver cancer that comes with widespread steroid use. He described the growing obsession with muscular body image among young men as \u201ca side-effect\u201d of toxic masculinity \u201callied to the cult of the manosphere\u201d. He added: \u201cThere\u2019s a group of people trying to drive male culture and behaviours in a particular way and this is one manifestation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his patients had become so obsessed with their image that they were reluctant to stop taking the drugs even when the cancer had been diagnosed and the cause identified.<\/p>\n

In one patient, in his early thirties, Wigmore and his colleagues removed two tumours each the size of a grapefruit in a long and complex operation, saving the man\u2019s life. \u201cHe potentially has a good outcome as long as he stays off the steroids,\u201d the surgeon said. \u201cBut whether he will or not is uncertain.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is hard to tell the scale of the threat. \u201cWe are not talking about an epidemic,\u201d Wigmore said. \u201cThis is very rare, but I\u2019ve seen two cases in the last six months. And across the country each liver unit is seeing small numbers of young men in similar situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe irony of taking drugs to make oneself more beautiful but ultimately shortening one\u2019s life is inescapable,\u201d he said, comparing the phenomenon to the obsession of some young women with risky cosmetic surgery such as Brazilian butt lifts.<\/p>\n

\"LouisLouis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere brought the debate into even more householdsNETFLIX<\/p>\n

He said most patients were oblivious to the risks. \u201cThey\u2019re completely unaware that anabolic steroids can cause this sort of problem. I think people know about irritability and frontal balding and things like \u2014 but they don\u2019t know about the cancer risk.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The link between steroid use and liver cancer was first raised in the 1970s and there have been sporadic reports on the subject in the medical journals ever since. Yet the message seems to struggle to get through.<\/p>\n

In 2019, surgeons in Cardiff reported two recent cases of body builders \u2014 one aged 28 and one 39 \u2014 who had developed huge tumours on their livers after taking steroids. The younger man had a cancerous mass removed weighing 4kg. Those surgeons, writing in the Annals of Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, called for a public campaign to \u201chighlight this potentially lethal complication\u201d of anabolic steroids.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said the practice was widespread, citing data from 2015-16 that suggested 48 per cent of those using the Welsh clean needle and syringe provision service were doing so for performance and image enhancing drugs.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the UK Anti-Doping agency estimated that more than a million people were using steroids, the vast majority of them male. The agency described the typical steroid abuser as a thirtysomething white-collar professional. A panel of 55 experts in 2022 estimated the number of steroid users was about 500,000.<\/p>\n

Liver surgeons are not the only ones to have warned of the growing use of steroids. Last year, Italian cardiologists, writing in the European Heart Journal, talked of an escalating \u201cgymdemic\u201d that they said was caused by \u201cthe diffusion of hypertrophic ideals and steroid use into mainstream youth culture\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They said this was risking a surge in heart problems, citing data that suggested a five-fold increase in sudden cardiac deaths among body builders globally over 15 years. \u201cSocial media promotes unrealistic body images, normalises compulsive training, and even facilitates illegal access to anabolic-androgenic steroids and supplements,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

Wigmore said the vast majority of liver cancers developed in those with diseased livers \u2014 a result of cirrhosis caused by alcohol abuse or hepatitis or fatty liver disease. Occasionally cancer will arise in an otherwise healthy liver as a result of a mutation, but usually only among patients in their seventies or eighties.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to see people in their twenties, thirties, forties with primary liver cancer is really exceptionally rare,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are a few genetic conditions which can predispose people to it. But in young men the association with anabolic steroid use is strong. Often they are slightly ashamed of talking about steroid use and when you drill down and uncover what\u2019s been going on it turns out that often they\u2019ve been taking drugs for several years and they are not under medical supervision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have no idea what dose they\u2019re taking \u2014 sometimes they don\u2019t even know what drugs they are taking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the liver does not feel pain there are often no side effects until the tumours have grown extremely large. \u201cThe only thing that they can feel is the capsule of the liver being stretched. That\u2019s the only awareness they have. And so often people can develop large tumors without ever having any symptoms until quite late. They don\u2019t suffer from jaundice or any of the other problems that you might expect with liver failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the tumours get so large \u2014 20cm in diameter or more \u2014 removing the tumour and saving the liver is not always possible. And patients with tumours bigger than 5cm are not eligible for a liver transplant. \u201cThey really, really have very few choices for treatment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Steroids are not the only drugs encouraged by the online manosphere. Last year The Sunday Times revealed<\/a> a booming trade in knock-off versions of an unlicensed and unproven next-generation slimming jabs called retatrutide, which is particularly popular among gym goers. And young men are increasingly targeted for testosterone replacement therapy, which can risk infertility.<\/p>\n

Wigmore said: \u201cThese are fit otherwise healthy young men at an early stage of their lives. And they are left with a potential lifespan measured in months rather than years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The patient, to look at him, was in the prime of his life: in his late thirties, fit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-405856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}