After federal officials raided the company’s headquarters and their warehouse in Boise, Idaho, chief executive officer of Meridian, Ryan de Luca, said they decided to recall 65 of their products that matched the list in the FDA’s search warrant.

There was no bargain or agreement between the company and the US Food and Drug Administration. De Luca made it clear that the recall has nothing to do with any agreement or with FDA’s suspicions that Bodybuilding.com sells and distributes steroids.

According to de Luca, the company was not aware of the products containing prohibited ingredients. Manufacturers assured them that the products were properly classified as dietary supplements in compliance with federal law.

The company’s main objective was to distribute and sell safe and effective products.

Steroids can cause a list of long-term side effects such as liver damage, kidney abnormalities, cardiovascular problems and even death.

De Luca is proud to say that the company did not suffer much from the recall since Bodybuilding.com sells more than 12,000 products online aside from those recalled products. They also sell protein powder and multivitamins.

According to the company, instructions on how to return products can be seen on their website, Bodybuilding.com. Customers can also contact the company through email at service@bodybuilding.com or through phone by calling 1-866-236-8417.

From Idaho Statesman:

The Meridian online retailer decided to recall 65 products listed in federal search warrants a few days after federal officials raided the company’s headquarters and Boise warehouse, the chief executive officer said Tuesday.

As per a new study, enzymes that are being used for steroid synthesis in snails, corals, and insects are not related to those used in humans.

The research team included French and American scientists, including Michael E. Baker, PhD, professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology-Hypertension at the Université de Lyon, ENS Lyon. During the research, it was observed that the obtained findings are very helpful in attaining a clear insight into the evolution of steroid hormone signaling. The research team also studied on the relationship of steroid synthesis to enzymes that are known to detoxify many harmful chemicals in the environment.

Vincent Laudet, Professor in the Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon, Division of Molecular Zoology, said that the effects of chemicals on snails and corals, however, continue to remain a cause of concern.

From Scienedaily.com:

Steroids hormones are key to many vital physiological responses in humans, ranging from anti-inflammatory agents to regulating events during pregnancy. They are also the target of many chemical pollutants, known as endocrine disruptors. As part of a program to understand the evolution of steroid hormone signaling, Laudet – along with Gabriel Markov, a student in the Institute of Functional Genomics, initially trained by Raquel Tavares at Université de Lyon, characterized the evolutionary relationships between proteins that synthesize steroids in animals. They traced the origin of such enzymes from vertebrates, insects, snails and jelly fish and interpreted these results through extensive discussions with Baker, Chantal Dauphin-Villemant at Université Paris 6, and Barbara Demeneix from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Through an analysis of several invertebrate genomes, the scientists discovered that snails and insects utilize steroid-synthesizing enzymes that are not vertebrate–related, but instead belong in an invertebrate family. Moreover, these invertebrate steroidogenic enzymes have a strong evolutionary connection to enzymes that detoxify chemicals (called xenobiotics).

This unexpected finding led them to hypothesize that these steroid-synthesizing enzymes arose independently from specific pathways used by snails and worms for detoxifying environmental chemicals.

Laudet went on to add that the findings truly emphasize on the need of more cross-disciplinary studies between endocrinologists, toxicologists, and zoologists.