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women more susceptible to alcohol than men
« on: Sep 3rd, 2002, 8:48am » |
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Interesting article here about how men and women metabolize alcoholic beverages. From: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999633
Women who drink beer have a better chance of matching their male drinking buddies drink for drink, while those who have wine and whisky get drunk more quickly than the lads, a new study shows.
It's no secret that females have higher blood alcohol levels after a few rounds than do men, even when body weight is taken into account. What puzzled researchers is that this gender difference disappears when alcohol is administered intravenously.
To try and explain why, a team led by Charles Lieber, a pathologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, measured the activity of three stomach enzymes known to break down alcohol.
Lieber discovered that an enzyme called chi-alcohol dehydrogenase (chi-ADH), was nearly twice as active at breaking down alcohol in men than in women.
Among volunteers who sipped mixtures containing 10 per cent and 40 per cent alcohol - levels similar to those found in wine and whisky, respectively - the activity of the chi-ADH shot up in men but not women.
But chi-ADH had little or no activity in male or female subjects who sipped a solution containing five per cent alcohol, like a typical beer.
Although these results suggest women could hold their own against men when drinking beer, the researchers recommended against it. They note other studies have shown alcohol has a more severe effect on the liver and other organs in women than in men.
"The lesson is, if you have parties, you should have two separate sizes of glasses, one for women and one for men," Lieber says. Lower body weight, and a higher proportion of fat, also make women more susceptible to booze.
"Lieber has found one of the factors that explain the gender difference," says Ting-Kai Li, director of the Indiana Alcohol Research Center at Indiana University in Indianapolis. "There could be others."
More at: Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (vol 25, p 502)
Catherine Zandonella
This story is from NewScientist.com's news service - for more exclusive news and expert analysis every week subscribe to New Scientist print edition.
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