Kaufman Marc J, Hudson James I, Kanayama Gen, Muse Samantha, Schnabel Jiana, Sokoll Rosalind, Pope Harrison G
McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2024 Sep 2;50(5):670-681. doi: 10.1080/00952990.2024.2403582. Epub 2024 Oct 7.
Long-term use of supraphysiologic doses of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) has been associated with impaired visuospatial memory in young men but little is known about its cognitive effects in middle-aged men. We compared cognition in middle-aged men with histories of long-term AAS use and age-matched non-users. We administered cognitive tests from the CANTAB battery to 76 weightlifters aged 37-60 years (mean [SD] 48.5 [6.5] years), of whom 51 reported at least 2 years of cumulative AAS use and 25 reported no AAS exposure. We found no significant AAS user versus non-user group differences on visuospatial, verbal memory, emotional recognition, or executive function tasks (corrected 's ≥ .00089; effect sizes ≤ .5). Our null visuospatial task findings contrast with our prior younger cohort study (mean age 37.1 [7.1] years), in which we found impaired visuospatial task performance in people who use AAS, and with other reports of cognitive impairments in younger men use AAS. Men who use AAS may develop early visuospatial memory deficits that stabilize by middle age while middle-aged non-users' performance may "catch up" due to normal age-related visuospatial declines. Similar effects could contribute to our null findings on other tasks. Between-study cohort substance use differences or environmental factor differences that modify cognition, such as study geographical location and time of year, also could contribute to our discordant findings. Since young adult male AAS users experience increased mortality from unnatural causes, improving our understanding of AAS cognitive effects in this age group is important.
长期使用超生理剂量的合成代谢雄激素类固醇（AAS）与年轻男性的视觉空间记忆受损有关，但对于其在中年男性中的认知影响却知之甚少。我们比较了有长期使用AAS病史的中年男性和年龄匹配的未使用者的认知情况。我们对76名年龄在37至60岁（平均[标准差]48.5[6.5]岁）的举重运动员进行了剑桥神经心理测试自动化成套系统（CANTAB）中的认知测试，其中51人报告至少有2年的AAS累积使用史，25人报告未接触过AAS。我们发现，在视觉空间、言语记忆、情感识别或执行功能任务方面，AAS使用者组与非使用者组之间没有显著差异（校正P≥0.00089；效应量≤0.5）。我们在视觉空间任务上的阴性结果与我们之前对较年轻队列（平均年龄37.1[7.1]岁）的研究形成对比，在之前的研究中我们发现使用AAS的人视觉空间任务表现受损，同时也与其他关于年轻男性使用AAS导致认知障碍的报告形成对比。使用AAS的男性可能会出现早期视觉空间记忆缺陷，并在中年时趋于稳定，而中年未使用者的表现可能会因与年龄相关的正常视觉空间能力下降而“赶上”。类似的影响可能导致我们在其他任务上得到阴性结果。研究队列之间物质使用的差异或影响认知的环境因素差异，如研究的地理位置和一年中的时间，也可能导致我们的结果不一致。由于年轻成年男性AAS使用者因非自然原因导致的死亡率增加，因此增进我们对该年龄组AAS认知影响的理解非常重要。
