December 31, 2024
Elevate/UNSPLASH.COM
Drinking spiked more among women than men during the COVID-19 pandemic, and women had more hospital visits and health complications related to alcohol since. A new study that links estrogen levels to binge drinking in female mice may help find new treatment for alcohol use disorder in women.
Women may be biologically susceptible to binge drinking, a new animal study suggests.
"We know a lot less about what drives alcohol drinking behavior in females because most studies of alcohol use have been done in males," senior study author Kristen Pleil, an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, said in a statement.
Pleil's study, published Monday in Nature Communications, found that female mice drank more in the first 30 minutes alcohol was made available on days when the hormone estrogen was circulating at high levels. When their estrogen levels were lower, the mice drank less.
Mice have anatomical, physiological and genetic similarities to humans that make them an ideal species for biomedical research.
In a prior study, Pleil's research team found a specific neural circuit in the brain was more excitable in female mice than in male mice. The new study found the neurons in that circuit activated right away when the female mice started drinking.
"When a female takes her first sip from the bottle containing alcohol, those neurons go crazy," Pleil said. "And if she's in a high-estrogen state, they go even crazier."
Pleil characterized this behavior as "front-loading" or "pre-gaming," which can lead to binge drinking. For women, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as consuming four or more drinks in two hours. For men, it's five drinks.
This study did not involve people, so further research is needed. But if the findings are consistent, they could be significant for the treatment of alcohol use disorder in women, who are more vulnerable to the negative health effects of alcohol, including alcohol-induced liver inflammation, cardiovascular disease, memory blackouts, hangovers and some cancers.
Drinking increased overall during the COVID-19 pandemic, but women's alcohol consumption jumped more than men's, research found. Since the pandemic, women also have had more hospital visits and health complications related to drinking than men.
Past research, in particular a 1997 study, suggested that light to moderate drinking had protective effects against cardiovascular disease. But those findings since have been disputed. The World Health Organization declared in 2022 that no level of alcohol consumption is safe, noting it causes at least seven types of cancer, including breast cancer and bowel cancer.
