• Women appear to be more vulnerable to chronic drinking than men are.
• New research uses computed tomography to examine alcohol's effects on the brains of alcoholic men and women.
• Results show that women develop alcohol-related brain damage more readily than men.

Women appear to be more vulnerable to chronic drinking than men are. Yet few studies have looked at gender differences in alcohol's effects on the brain. A study in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research addresses this gap in research, using computed tomography (CT) to examine brain atrophy in the brains of alcoholic men and women. The findings support and build upon a prior hypothesis that women develop alcohol-related brain damage more readily than men.

"Studies using brain-imaging techniques are time-consuming and expensive," said Karl Mann, full professor in the department for addictive behavior and addiction medicine at the University of Heidelberg and first author of the study. "Women have generally not been considered in brain-imaging studies, or samples have not been large enough to differentiate between women and men. Conversely, male patients with alcohol dependence have historically been easier to recruit because the majority of alcoholic patients are male and the first evaluations of larger samples were carried out in soldiers. Furthermore, study results were thought to be generally applicable to both genders. Yet gender differences in the development, course and consequences of alcohol dependence have to be considered in early diagnosis as this probably will lead to different therapeutic strategies."

"Not only is the prevalence of alcoholism somewhat higher in men than women, thus increasing the chances of recruiting men over women in research programs," added Edith Sullivan, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, "but some spe
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15-May-2005