Long-Term Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use May Severely Impact Visuospatial Memory

The long-term use of anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) may severely impact the user’s ability to accurately recall the shapes and spatial relationships of objects, according to a recent study conducted by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School investigators.

In the study, published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, McLean Hospital Research Psychiatrist Harrison Pope, MD, used a variety of tests to determine whether AAS users developed cognitive defects due to their admitted history of abuse.

"Our work clearly shows that while some areas of brain function appear to be unaffected by the use of AAS, users performed significantly worse on the visuospatial tests that were administered. Those deficits directly corresponded to their length of use of anabolic-androgenic steroids," explained Pope. "Impaired visuospatial memory means that a person might have difficulty, for example, in remembering how to find a location, such as an address on a street or a room in a building… We are worried that with higher doses of AAS and longer periods of lifetime exposure, some people might even eventually develop visuospatial deficits similar to those sometimes seen in elderly people with dementia, who can easily become lost or disoriented."