Mad Men, Women & Steroid Cocktails: A Review of the Impact of Sex & Other Factors on Anabolic Androgenic Steroids Effects on Affective Behaviors
RATIONALE:
For
several decades, elite athletes and a growing number of recreational consumers
have used anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) as performance enhancing drugs.
Despite mounting evidence that illicit use of these synthetic steroids has
detrimental effects on affective states, information available on sex-specific
actions of these drugs is lacking.
OBJECTIVES:
The
focus of this review is to assess information to date on the importance of sex
and its interaction with other environmental factors on affective behaviors,
with an emphasis on data derived from non-human studies.
METHODS:
The
PubMed database was searched for relevant studies in both sexes.
RESULTS:
Studies
examining AAS use in females are limited, reflecting the lower prevalence of
use in this sex. Data, however, indicate significant sex-specific differences
in AAS effects on anxiety-like and aggressive behaviors, interactions with
other drugs of abuse, and the interplay of AAS with other environmental factors
such as diet and exercise.
CONCLUSIONS:
Current
methods for assessing AAS use have limitations that suggest biases of both
under- and over-reporting, which may be amplified for females who are poorly
represented in self-report studies of human subjects and are rarely used in
animal studies. Data from animal literature suggest that there are significant
sex-specific differences in the impact of AAS on aggression, anxiety, and
concomitant use of other abused substances. These results have relevance for
human females who take these drugs as performance-enhancing substances and for
transgender XX individuals who may illicitly self-administer AAS as they
transition to a male gender identity.
- 1Cherokee Nation Technology Solutions Contractor to: The National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) Network Research Program, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 4860 South Palmer Road, Bethesda, MD, 20889, USA. marie.m.onakomaiya.gr@dartmouth.edu.
- 2Department of Physiology and Neurobiology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, HB 7701, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA.
- Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2016 Feb;233(4):549-69. doi: 10.1007/s00213-015-4193-6. Epub 2016 Jan 12.
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