Cortisol levels and depression in men and women using heroin and cocaine
Section snippets
Study population
The Study of HIV, Injection Drug Use, Nutrition and Endocrinology (SHINE) was a cross-sectional evaluation of volunteers recruited in Baltimore, designed to investigate the effects of HIV and drug use on multiple endocrine and metabolic variables, body composition, and quality of life. Participants were recruited into the study from 2001 to 2004 by the following categories: (1) no illicit drug use in the past 3 years; (2) current methadone maintenance; (3) occasional drug use (<3 times/week in
Participant characteristics
A total of 209 participants, after excluding the outliers, were categorized according to their gender, drug use and HIV status (Table 1a, Table 1b). The majority of study participants were African American. Age (mean=43.4 years for men, 42.2 years for women) and education (24% men and 25% women completed at least 12 years of schooling) did not differ by gender (ps>.05). A majority of the study population reported heavy drug use, and among those 65 (42%) reported administering their drugs via
Discussion
Gender, illicit drug use and HIV status may all impact cortisol concentrations and mood. We observed greater basal cortisol production among illicit drug users regardless of their gender or HIV status. There are a number of possible explanations for this result. Because we recruited from a community-based population of illicit drug users, it is possible that many of the active users were experiencing withdrawal symptoms during study participation. Hypercortisolism is a known consequence of
Acknowledgements
We thank Vickie Sinkler and Rosa Sebree for their help in recruiting participants and collecting data. This work was supported by grants 1R01DA/DKR814-6141 and 1R01DA14098 from the NIH. Portions of this work were presented at the 86th Annual Meeting of the Endocrine Society, 2004, New Orleans, LA.
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