Alcohol abuse more harmful to female brain

According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 45% of county women consume alcohol, 2% are chronic drinkers, and 16% are binge drinkers. In actuality, those figures may be higher because, when asked, many heavy drinkers “sanitize” their response to a lesser amount. According to a new study by Swedish researchers, alcohol abuse appears to be much more detrimental to the female brain than to the male brain. Researchers from the multidisciplinary Gothenburg Alcohol Research Project in Sweden found that after four years of excessive drinking, women experienced the same loss of serotonergic function that occurred in men who had been abusing alcohol for 12 years. "We have to be aware that women are more vulnerable to excessive drinking, not just bodily harm but also [harm] to the brain. We also have to be aware that prevalent psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety, which are related to imbalance in the serotonin system and which women often are seeking help for, may also be influenced by excessive drinking," noted principal investigator Claudia Fahlke, PhD, from the Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg. The study was published online July 28 in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and will appear in the January 2012 print edition of the journal.

How Alcohol Impacts the Brain

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According to the study, alcohol dependence has been associated with reduced function of serotonin and dopamine, as well as with a reduction of noradrenaline activity. The researchers note that no previous study had investigated all three systems in the same alcohol-dependent individuals. They investigated all three systems in a group of alcohol-dependent individuals and compared them with those of a group of control participants who engaged in non-harmful alcohol consumption. The study group was comprised of 70 individuals: 19 women (10 alcohol-dependent, 9 healthy control patients) and 51 men (32 alcohol-dependent, 19 control patients). All of the alcohol-dependent participants were recruited from three outpatient clinics and were considered high-functioning: 86% had jobs, and 93% had permanent residences. Men and women had consumed the same amount of alcohol during the last year before the investigation; the average alcohol intake during that period was 759 ± 564 grams of pure alcohol per week.

Testing revealed that both sexes experienced a 45% decrease in serotonergic neural transmission relative to control participants at three, four, and five after citalopram administration. However, the effect was seen after only four years of alcohol abuse in women compared with 14 years in men. (Citalopram administration measures serotonin response in the brain.) "We expected that long-term excessive alcohol intake would impair the serotonin function in both genders, but [it] was a surprise for us that women´s serotonin function should be equally affected as men's, despite [the fact] that they, on average, had been drinking excessively just for 4 years," Dr. Fahlke said. According to the authors, the similar loss of serotonergic function in alcohol-dependent women and men despite the disparity in length of alcohol abuse suggests a "telescoping effect" in women.

Alcohol and health

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