Drinking alcohol when oestrogen levels are surging could compel women to hit the bottle harder, thereby possibly driving them to ‘binge-drink’, researchers said after they found that female mice drank much more on days when the sex hormone’s levels were high.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is the first to find that a higher oestrogen level in the body promotes ‘binge-drinking’ behaviour in women by contributing to sex-specific differences, researchers said.
Binge-drinking is said to intensify alcohol’s harmful effects, with women being more vulnerable to the negative health effects, compared to men.
Researchers, led by those at Weill Cornell Medicine, US, previously showed that neurons in a brain region called ‘bed nucleus of the stria terminalis’, or BNST, were more excitable in female mice, compared to male ones.
Sometimes referred to as ‘extended amygdala’, the BNST is a central hub for regulating stress-related brain activity, including mood, anxiety and depression.
The enhanced activity in BNST correlated with the female mice’s binge drinking behaviour, the researchers said.
“Oestrogen has such powerful effects on so many behaviours, particularly in females. So, it makes sense that it would also modulate drinking,” senior author Kristen Pleil, associate professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, said.
In the latest study, the researchers monitored ‘oestrogen’ hormone levels throughout the oestrous cycle of female mice — the equivalent of menstrual cycle in women — following which, the mice were served alcohol.
The team found that on days when a female mouse had high levels of oestrogen circulating in the body, it drank more, compared to days with low levels.
“We found that female mice displayed greater binge alcohol drinking and reduced avoidance when oestrogen was high during the oestrous cycle than when it was low,” the authors said. Source: PTI