Anabolic steroids may lead to violence

Anabolic steroids may have long-term effects on players’ behavior and aggression long after they stop abusing the performance enhancing drugs.

Anabolic steroids may have long-term effects on players’ behavior and aggression long after they stop abusing the performance enhancing drugs. Northeastern University psychology professor Richard Melloni, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, recently found evidence that long after steroid use ends it can produce long-term aggression, the university said Friday. Melloni has been studying how steroids used during adolescence may permanently alter the brain’s ability to produce serotonin. Adolescent Syrian hamsters, given their similar brain circuitry to human adolescents, were administered doses of anabolic steroids and then measured for aggressiveness over certain periods of time. The researchers initially hypothesized steroid use during adolescence might permanently alter the brain’s chemistry and a person’s tendency toward aggression long after use has stopped. Their most recent findings, published this week in Hormones and Behavior, enabled them to confirm this hypothesis and conclude there is indeed a lengthy price — namely long-term aggression — to pay for drug abuse even after the ingestion of steroids ceases. “We know testosterone or steroids affect the development of serotonin nerve cells, which, in turn, decreases serotonin availability in the brain,” Melloni says. (Source: MEDline Plus, United Press International November 2003)