Written by William Llewellyn
01 January 2018

17NN317-Ana

Steroid Q&A - Beware of Fakes

 

 

Testosterone Acetate?

My source has testosterone acetate. I think the company was ATD China; it had a green label and came in 70 mg/ml and in a 10 ml vial. Is this a real product? What do you think of testosterone acetate in general?

This product is most likely not a real pharmaceutical, in the sense that a registered and licensed drug company made it for sale through legitimate pharmacies. China is admittedly a hard country for an English-speaking/reading person like me to keep tabs on, though. It is always possible this was really approved for sale by the government. However, I strongly doubt it.

Testosterone acetate is a real steroid, though. It is found very rarely, usually in blended products. The old Mexican veterinary preparation Deposterona comes to mind. That contained the acetate, valerate and undecanoate esters of testosterone. How unusual is that!? The total concentration was only 60 mg/ml, however, so it was not very popular. I have never seen testosterone acetate in a stand-alone product. Also, being in a 10 ml vial is highly suspicious. Most other countries (not all, but most) would require a product like this to come in single-use ampules, which keep the solution sterile.

What do I think of testosterone acetate? Acetate is the smallest ester that can be used to make an injectable testosterone. Once cleaved, this short-chain carboxylic acid can be highly irritating to the tissues at the site of injection— very painful in some cases. The acetate ester also slows the release of testosterone only slightly. Its pharmacokinetics isn’t all that much better than straight testosterone suspension, which also happens to be less painful for many people.

Testosterone acetate was first described many decades ago, when injectable androgens were first being developed. This steroid went away from clinical practice fairly quickly, and probably for good reason. It was replaced by agents that were more comfortable, slower acting, had higher oil solubility, were more concentrated and offered greater therapeutic potential. In short, testosterone acetate would “work” like any testosterone drug because it provides testosterone. But all in all, it is not desirable unless you wanted a fast-acting and possibly very irritating drug for some reason.

 roidtest650

Very Painful T400

My friend and I each bought a bottle of Test 400 from ISIS. This is a 400 mg/ml testosterone enanthate and decanoate blend. Within 24 hours of injecting 1 ml each, we were both in an enormous amount of pain. We were sore and each had a lump in our muscles for almost a week. The whole area was red and swollen. I stopped injecting it after that. My friend tried one more time with half the dosage but had a similar reaction. Then he stopped. Is this normal? Is the product bad? I assume it is underground, but others have used from this lab without problems. I’m not sure of this product, though.

Yes, this is an underground product. Normally, I don’t follow the individual labs. There are just too many, and things change too quickly. Plus, they sometimes even counterfeit each other. My advice about particular underground products is always the same: avoid all underground drugs if you can. When there is no oversight, there are much greater risks with sterility and purity, generally speaking.

This particular product did come to my attention very recently, however. It appeared in a U.K. clinic’s warning email. Health care workers there have been getting many complaints from users. They are all noticing the same thing, a high level of injection-site discomfort. No explanation as to what is causing it yet. Some possibilities include adulterants, poor quality and unsterile materials, or even excess benzyl alcohol, which is sometimes used to help the high concentrations dissolve.   You did the right thing. Drop something if it is causing you an issue. No cycle is worth risking permanent harm to your body.

 

About the Author

William Llewellyn is the author of the anabolic steroid reference guide, ANABOLICS 10th Edition. He is also a longtime team member at Muscular Development, having been a regular monthly columnist since 2002. William adapted this steroid profile from his work at anabolic.org. He is also credited with helping to develop ROIDTEST™, an at-home steroid testing kit used to identify real and fake steroid products.

 

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