Oxandrolone is used with a diet and exercise program to cause weight gain in patients who have lost too much weight due to surgery, injury, or long lasting infections, or who are very underweight for unknown reasons. Oxandrolone is also used to treat bone pain in patients with osteoporosis (a condition in which the bones become thin and weak and break easily) and to prevent certain side effects in patients who take corticosteroids (a group of medications used to treat many conditions that involve inflammation or swelling of part of the body for a long time. Oxandrolone is in a class of medications called anabolic steroids. It works by increasing the amount of protein made by the body. This protein is used to build more muscle and increase body weight.

One effective treatment for HIV-related wasting, oxandrolone, has been available by prescription for over 30 years. It potentially could have prevent countless deaths from HIV-associated wasting. However, it is rarely used for people with AIDS and has not yet been thoroughly studies in that population. Oxandrolone has been found to be reasonably safe and effective for children and for people with alcohol related liver-disease. The drug is taken orally and has few significant side effects at dosages effective against severe chronic wasting. It is extremely cheap to manufacture, however its manufacturer has chosen to artificially and exploitively inflate the price of oxandrolone.

Oxandrolone has been extensively studied in children with growth disorders and adult men with alcoholic hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver that is often accompanied by wasting. It has been shown very safe and effective for treating alcoholic hepatitis related wasting and it is believed that the metabolic problems associated with this condition are similar to those found in HIV-wasting.

Unlike other anabolic steroids, such as testosterone, oxandrolone is minimally metabolized by the liver, thereby avoiding most drug interactions and the liver toxicity often seen with other steroids. Even people whose livers where badly damaged by alcohol, and therefore were unable to take many drugs, did well on oxandrolone.

Oxandrolone has been approved by the FDA since the early 1960's at a dosage of 5-10 mg per day for conditions which included weight loss "due to extensive surgery, chronic infection, severe trauma, failure to gain or maintain weight without definite pathophysiologic reasons [and] protein catabolism due to prolonged corticosteroid administration." Since HIV wasting is the result of a chronic infection and is often without definite cause, oxandrolone is clearly indicated and FDA approved for HIV-related wasting at the dose of 5-10 mg per day.

However, based upon studies in alcoholic hepatitis patients and more limited studies in people with AIDS, many researchers and activists believe that the effective dose of oxandrolone may be much higher than the FDA indicated dose, forty to eighty milligrams per day. Although the approved dose is only 10 mg per day, many physicians have prescribed higher, "off-label" doses of oxandrolone.