The use of performance-enhancing substances by athletes is as old as sport itself. However, over the past decade, concern has grown as the use of a wide variety of drugs being used — in particular anabolic steroids and growth hormone — has transcended the elite sporting arena to the general population where they are used for both performance- and image-enhancing reasons. However, even for the most commonly used and best known of the substances, anabolic steroids, there is a paucity of reliable information as to the prevalence of use.

This group of drug users, referred to as steroid and image enhancing drugs (SIEDs) users presents a number of specific challenges for healthcare services; they are injecting drug users who frequently employ very complex drug regimens with no evidential basis.

In order to better understand and evidence the public health issues, Public Health Wales commissioned an online survey of SIED users in the UK, in collaboration with academic colleagues at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University. This document summarises key findings from the second year of the SIEDs survey, with a particular focus of the report being on the specific drugs of use. The report also outlines the further dissemination of results from the 2014 data sweep of the survey and describes developments for enhanced data collection in 2015. These summary findings from the 2014 survey should be viewed in conjunction with the 2013 survey results (Chandler & McVeigh, 2014).