Is Oxandrolone legal in the United Kingdom?

The steroid with the best medical record, from a place you would not guess. Badly burned children took it for up to two years, and it helped their bones and their growth.

Oxandrolone is known as the mild steroid. Under that reputation sits a serious set of results in people, and none of it is about bodybuilding.

How it works: Oxandrolone is a man-made steroid built from DHT, a strong form of testosterone. It has a small chemical change that lets it survive the liver and work as a pill.

Approval history: Was FDA-approved as Oxandrin to help people regain weight lost after major surgery, long-term infection, severe injury and some other wasting conditions. A Schedule III controlled substance. The brand was discontinued in the United States, so today it mostly comes from compounding pharmacies or the grey market.

Licenses medicines for sale in the UK. A compound without a licence to be sold (a marketing authorisation) is an unlicensed medicine. The law only lets it reach people through a prescriber, under the specials scheme (unlicensed medicines made for one patient's needs). It cannot be sold as a research product.

The legal category above is how The Longevity Archive reads Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Oxandrolone on the reviewed date. It is not a legal opinion. Rules change. Bringing a compound into the country, prescribing it and owning it can each be treated differently. Check with the agency before you act on anything here.

Check MHRA directly

Whether Oxandrolone is banned in sport is set by the World Anti-Doping Code and by military rules, not by its legal status in the United Kingdom. Before you compete or get tested, look up Oxandrolone by name on the Prohibited List, or look up a named product in Global DRO. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, category S0 bans, at all times, any drug-like substance that meets two tests. No other section of the List covers it. And no government health regulator anywhere has a current approval for it as a treatment in people. Many substances that are approved somewhere are banned by name in another section. So approval does not mean a substance is allowed in sport.

• WADA Prohibited List
• Global DRO (check a named product)
• USADA (US athletes)
• Operation Supplement Safety (US service members)

The rules you compete or serve under decide this, not this page.