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Hormones May Affect Women's Response to Alcohol
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THURSDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- Female adult rats are less sensitive than males to the sedating effects of alcohol, and their cycling hormone levels may mediate alcohol''s effects. That''s the conclusion of a Duke University Medical Center study in the January issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. "Despite the fact that men outnumber women in terms of having alcohol-related problems, women are more vulnerable to many of the effects of alcohol use," study first author and research analyst Young May Cha said in a prepared statement. "In both humans and animal models, females can drink less and for a shorter period of time, and yet experience the same level of effect produced in males. This ''telescoping'' phenomenon strongly suggests that there is something unique about the female sex that lends it to being so susceptible to alcohol''s effects," Cha said. She and her colleagues studied female rats to investigate the impact that the estrous cycles had on alcohol''s effects on the body. They found that the sedative effect of alcohol on female rats was most pronounced in the first of the four estrous cycle phases (which corresponds to the onset of mating behavior), and in the last phase of the cycle. The study also found that adolescent female and male rats were similarly sedated by alcohol but that adult female rats were less sensitive to the sedation. "This results suggests that as humans mature from adolescence to adulthood, women may become less sensitive to alcohol-induced sedation than men do. This change may have consequences for the ability of an adult woman to physiologically gauge how impaired she is becoming as she drinks," Cha said. "This study underscores the need to look more closely at the factors that cause this sex difference in alcohol effects, and emphasizes that in some ways, alcohol is less potent in females than in males. We propose that hormonal fluctuations -- or substances affected by those hormonal fluctuations, such as neurosteroids -- may play a role in mediating this sex difference," Cha added. More information The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about women and alcohol.
Last Updated: Jan. 6, 2006 |