Polite Dissent

Captain America and the Falcon #4 Two Americas, conclusion
Priest, writer
Bart Sears, artist

While Captain America battles a fake Captain America in the middle of a hurricane, the Falcon (Sam Wilson) contacts Robbie Robertson about a mysterious drug known as AVX used by the fake Captain. Robbie tells him:

AVX was some kind of cellular regeneration formula — a super steroid…AVX is water soluble – the body can’t store it – he’d sweat it out in time – like Vitamin C.

Twice more the reader is informed that for Captain America to succeed, the faux-Cap needs to sweat the drug out of his system.

Vitamin C is indeed water soluble. However it is not excreted to any appreciable amount (if at all) by the sweat glands. Like most medications, the kidney does the bulk of the work excreting the drug. The only reference I could find to sweating out vitamin C was in a single dubious looking “nutritional” website. All of the medical texts and articles I could find referred to renal (kidney) excretion.

Unlike vitamin C, anabolic steroids are generally water insoluble, so the idea of sweating them out makes even less sense. Like vitamin C, steroids are excreted by the kidneys.

To give Priest some credit, as mentioned in previous posts steroids (like hormones) are a good medications for transdermal administration (patches).