I recently ran across a web site called www.ergo-log.com which has a lot of info on designer steroid chemistry and a lot of other useful information (e.g., actual studies with these compounds, lab tests of companie’s products, etc.). It has a lot of information on AAS and other ergogenic substances also. The guys that run the site are chemists and are very knowledgeable.
Anyway, I posted a link to the web site on the Discount Anabolics forum; I also happened to mention that I had read some info on the site about Super Drol and liver dammage, as well as Phera-Plex posibly causing heart enlargement. Well, I was immediately banned as a “spammer”. In other words, this web site might actually scare some of their customers and cause them sales! What blatent disregard for the well being of their customers. As long as they sell S-Drol and the like, to hell with people’s health!
By the way, ergo-log is NOT anti designer steroids, they just believe in informing people about the known risks and giving them the knowledge to make more informed and safer choices.
I couldn’t figure which studies mentioned were of particular interest (or even related to) clinical studies of the “prohormones” now on the market – maybe there was one but to tell the truth I only spent a minute looking.
I did see the thing on Egyptian androgens.
The Egyptian chemists, as politely suggested by other scientists quoted in the article, may well have done something that makes no sense (also putting it politely.)
It seems to me that the 17b-cyano group is likely labile. A cyano group usually isn’t much so, as CN- isn’t a very good leaving group, but it’s not a terrible one either (pKa = 9.3). However with their doubled-up weirdness of putting the amide ester on the 17a-position, it seems to me that should greatly aid the departure of the cyano.
Thus leaving plain ol’ 17-hydroxy, making the putting of the cyano there utterly futile if so.
And the amount of evidence that a 17-hydroxy is needed for activity is rather large.
At the least they should have demonstrated that 17-cyano was recovered in the urine. From the comment by de Groot, it certainly seems they didn’t bother.