[quote]SIM37 wrote:
Here is a sample of 3 seconds spent research AAS and Cardiac Hypertrophy on Bing:
3.2. Effects of AAS use on heart mass
3.2.1. The impact of AAS use
Eleven (12%) of the AAS users and 13 (7%) of the controls had heart weights greater than 500 g. Analysis of the logarithm of heart mass by multivariate statistics showed strong correlations between body mass and heart mass [F([1,261)=142.1, P<.00001], height and heart mass [F(1,261)=5.24, P<.02], and age and heart mass [F(1,261)=20.4, P<.00001]. A significantly greater heart mass [F(1, 261)=16.4, P=.0001] was also identified among AAS users (Fig. 1).
4.1. Comments on the findings
The major finding presented here was a significantly greater cardiac mass among deceased users of AAS compared to individuals with no suspected use of AAS. Multivariate analysis indicated that the increased heart size in the AAS users was explained not only by a physiological adaptation to an increased body mass, but also by some other factor related to use of AAS.
This finding correlates with earlier echocardiography-based studies that have demonstrated an elevated risk of developing concentric LVH among AAS users [14], [15], [16] and [25]. Other studies have failed to detect such a relationship [12], [17], [18] and [19]. It has been argued that the negative studies usually involved the use of moderate doses of AAS compared to the positive studies that involved a history of long-term AAS use [26]. Our sample consisted of deceased persons who were subjected to medicolegal death investigations. AAS analysis was performed only at the request of the forensic pathologist in such investigations. During the most recent 10-year period, approximately 20% of the deceased individuals subjected to postmortem medicolegal examinations were screened for illicit drugs, but less than 1% for AAS. We believe that most forensic pathologists only decide to include AAS in the toxicology screen when increased muscle mass is observed, which implies that our sample mostly consisted of long-term AAS users. If this assumption holds, AAS-related cardiac hypertrophy could be connected to long-term use of AAS.
Although our cases originated from medicolegal investigations with an expected high number of deaths from unnatural causes, it is surprising that only one of these deaths was considered to be related primarily to cardiac hypertrophy. One interpretation could be that the risk of death from cardiac hypertrophy in AAS users is not very great. However, it is also possible that cardiac death related to AAS use occurs later, perhaps with the cessation of weight training. If this is the case, the possible connections between AAS use and cardiac pathology might be overlooked. Accumulating evidence strongly indicates that the use of AAS spread outside the communities of elite athletes in the early 1980s; therefore, adverse effects that may require years or even decades to develop, such as cardiac hypertrophy, could markedly increase in the near future [26].
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Thanks for pulling this. This is exactly the kind of thing I had been looking for. I learned about GH and all the side effects of AAS on the endocrine and GI pathways my first year of med school but I haven’t seen cardiac pathology yet. With the amount of nosing around people around and the competitive atmosphere here I couldn’t exactly ask one of the M3/M4s or one of the lecturing MDs.
Thanks again for the help