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Published on: August 18, 2020
Differences in cognitive deficits in patients with methamphetamine and heroin use disorder compared with healthy
Yang Tian1, Dongmei Wang1, Fusheng Fan2
1CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Background And Aims:
To date, the pattern of heroin- and methamphetamine-induced cognitive impairment is unclear, especially in the Chinese population. The aim of this study was to compare the similarity and heterogeneity of cognitive impairment between heroin and methamphetamine-dependent patients and to link cognitive impairment to drug-related variables.
Methods:
567 pure methamphetamine patients, 78 pure heroin patients and 201 healthy volunteers participated in this study. The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) was used to assess cognitive function including immediate memory, visuospatial/constructional index, language, attention, delayed memory, and total scores.
Results:
Methamphetamine-dependent and heroin-dependent patients performed significantly worse on all RBANS subtest and total scores (all p < 0.05). Moreover, methamphetamine-dependent patients had more delayed memory impairment than heroin-dependent patients (p = 0.02). In addition, some drug-related variables, such as duration of abstinence, age at first drug use, and duration of drug use, were independently associated with memory and visuospatial/constructional index in methamphetamine patients (all p < 0.05). In contrast, none of the drug-related variables were associated with cognitive performance in heroin patients (all p > 0.05).
Conclusions:
Chronic heroin and methamphetamine patients may exhibit different patterns of cognitive deficits.
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