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You tell me if the chicken or the egg was first, though if PEDs are as widespread as some claim in cycling they might make a good study group.
With all of those key facts unknown, I asked Dr. Philip Kantoff, Chief of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, whether there could possibly be any link between taking performance-enhancing drugs and developing testicular cancer. Of course Dr. Kantoff has no personal knowledge of Armstrong’s history and our conversation was purely speculative. Here, slightly edited is what he said:
“There are no studies that prospectively look at testicular cancer with any of these drugs…Theoretically, of the drugs under consideration — I’m not sure he took human growth hormone — but of the potential performance enhancing drugs he may have taken, it’s conceivable that growth hormone could, theoretically, be linked to cancer but there is no study to support that…
[On the question of testosterone, Dr. Kantoff said the most common context for treatment with testosterone is this]…the guy that comes in, he’s a middle-aged man, a little depressed, his libido is down and his testosterone is slightly low. They give him enough to normalize his testosterone levels, but this is not in the category of enhancing, it’s normalizing levels. And again, there aren’t any definitive studies on this…there’s belief and then there are studies…
With performance enhancement, you take people with normal levels and gve them super high levels. It’s a whole understudied field. Nobody’s ever taken a look at 20-to-30-year-olds with normal testosterone levels and giving them super high levels and the side effects from that…
With human growth hormone, it’s conceivable — you can enhance the growth of cells — but there’s no data.”
About 5,000-10,000 men a year develop testicular cancer, Kantoff said. But it’s the most common cancer in men between 20 and 40 in the U.S. So what’s the bottom line in Armstrong’s case?
“Any conclusion that there’s a link would be a big leap here,” Kantoff said. “All of these things could cause harm when taken at super high levels, but nobody’s ever studied it.”
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