Binge drinkers beware

2005-04-04 08:17

London - Binge drinking - an increasingly serious problem among British women - causes depression and impairs thought processes especially in women, according to a new study.

Theodora Duka, a professor at the University of Sussex in southern England, said these problems caused by sporadic heavy drinking could lead to alcohol dependency.

Duka's team questioned male and female volunteers aged 18 to 30 about their alcohol and drug abuse, as well as their character traits and mood states.

They also ran a series of IQ tests through the course of the study, details of which were published in the journal Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research.

The subjects were tested on their working memory and vigilance.

Binge drinkers reported less positive moods than non-binge drinkers. Female binge drinkers performed worse in the tests of vigilance and working memory.

Binge drinking = negative moods

"Binge drinking is associated with a negative, as in depressive, mood," the team reported.

"It is also associated with an impaired performance in a working memory task, which tests the ability to hold important information in short-term memory to use it for accurate response, and also in a task that measures how well an individual can withhold a response, which under the circumstances is inappropriate.

"These two latter effects were more pronounced in the female binge drinkers," it said.

Medical experts and social scientists in Britain and the United States have detected an increase in binge drinking among women, particularly high achievers with good careers.

Co-researcher Fulton Crews, director of the Centre for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina in the US said: "What is particularly novel about this report is the finding that females are impaired more than males.

"The recent increase in female college student drinking could increase the incidence of females seeking treatment for alcohol dependence over the next decade or two," he predicted.

If binge drinkers progressed to greater mood and cognitive disruption, this could be an indication that it could lead on to dependence, he said.

"It would also be particularly interesting to determine if individuals who stop binge drinking show a reversal of mood and executive deficits," Crews said.

Duka said it was known that people would "self medicate" with alcohol if suffering from anxiety or depression.

"We need to know also whether binge drinking will contribute to anxiety and depression and if the effects of binge drinking and mood add together to impair cognitive performance," she added. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA