Interesting article here from the American Heart Association.
newsroom.heart.org
"Using two-dimensional ultrasound imaging, researchers found that the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber, was significantly weaker during contraction (systolic function) in those taking anabolic steroids compared to the non-steroid users.
Seventy-one percent of the anabolic steroid users who were on-drug at the time of evaluation had a low pumping capacity (less than 52 percent) whereas off-drug users had largely normal pumping capacity. In contrast, researchers found that only two of the non-users had a low pumping capacity.
Diastolic function, which is when the left ventricle relaxes and fills with blood, was impaired both for on-drug and off-drug anabolic steroid users. The researchers said this suggests a more permanent heart problem."
“Compared to non-users, anabolic steroid users displayed both higher systolic and diastolic blood pressure as well as a higher prevalence of levels of bad (LDL)
cholesterol in their blood,” said Aaron Baggish, M.D., study co-lead author and associate director of the cardiovascular performance program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston."
“It is critical that clinicians become aware of the long-term risks of anabolic steroid use on the heart. Most people relate anabolic steroids to cheating among athletes and fail to realize that there is a large population of men who have developed dependence upon these drugs, but who are not readily visible. T
he oldest members of this population are only now reaching middle age,” said Harrison Pope, Jr., M.D., the study’s other co-lead author and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School"
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Clinicians need to know that there may be a marked increase in anabolic steroid-related cardiac pathology as this population moves into later middle-age and beyond,” said Pope who is also director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital, Harvard’s largest teaching hospital in psychiatry.
Other co-authors are Rory B. Weiner, M.D.; Gen Kanayama, M.D., Ph.D.; James I. Hudson, M.D.; Sc.D.; Michael Lu, M.D.; and Udo Hoffman, M.D., M.P.H. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
A grant from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse funded the study."