CONTROLLED STUDY OF ANABOLIC STEROID USE IN WOMEN

越来越多的文献表明，合成代谢-雄激素类药物 它们促进肌肉质量的增加和身体脂肪的减少，被广泛使用 被美国人虐待。许多研究表明，在男性中，类固醇可以 导致医疗和精神疾病的发病率。例如，最近的 本实验室的研究，比较了88名使用类固醇的男性和68名使用类固醇的男性 与之匹配的对照组，发现主要情绪的患病率显著增加 与使用类固醇和停用类固醇相关的综合征。 然而，很少有研究研究类固醇的性质和作用。 用于女性，尽管有证据表明，超过10万美国女性 滥用这些药物。 这项申请中提出的研究试图在女性中复制 研究人员先前的设计，用于上述男性研究。 在这项拟议的研究中，30名使用类固醇的女性和30名不使用类固醇的女性将 从两个大都市的体育馆招募，使用 招聘流程旨在最大限度地减少选择偏见。研究对象将 接受采访，使用从调查人员的飞行员那里提炼出来的工具 研究，并将提交尿液进行类固醇和其他 毒品。他们还将接受身体检查，包括卡尺。 身体脂肪的测定，并抽取血液进行标准化学 和血液学指标。用户和非用户将在基本情况下进行比较 人口统计变量，病史，身体和实验室结果， 和精神症状和症状的发生率 没有接触过类固醇。 尽管拟议的研究是自然主义的，并依赖于回顾 按主题报告，此方法表示唯一能够 评估女性滥用类固醇的性质和影响，因为它是 在实验室里研究这些影响在伦理上是不合理的。

A growing literature suggests that anabolic-androgenic steroids, drugs which promote gains in muscle mass and loss of body fat, are widely abused by Americans. Many studies have shown that in men, steroids can lead to both medical and psychiatric morbidity. For example, a recent study from this laboratory, comparing 88 steroid-using men with 68 matched controls, found a markedly increased prevalence of major mood syndromes in association with both steroid use and steroid withdrawal. However, very few studies have examined the nature and effects of steroid use in women, despite evidence that more than 100,000 American women have abused these drugs. The study proposed in this application seeks to duplicate in women the investigators' previous design, used in the study of men described above. In the proposed study, 30 steroid-using women and 30 non-using women will be recruited from gymnasiums in two metropolitan areas, using a recruitment process designed to minimize selection bias. Subjects will be interviewed, using an instrument refined from the investigators' pilot study, and will submit urine to be tested for both steroids and other drugs. They will also receive a physical examination, including caliper determinations of body fat, and have blood drawn for standard chemistry and hematology measures. Users and non-users will be compared on basic demographic variables, medical history, physical and laboratory findings, and incidence of psychiatric symptoms and syndromes during and in the absence of steroid exposure. Although the proposed study is naturalistic, and relies on retrospective reports by subjects, this method represents the only design capable of assessing the nature and effects of steroid abuse in women, since it is not ethically reasonable to examine these effects in the laboratory.