Alcoholism in the news
CNN Health reported yesterday on Nichol et al's (2007) findings that women display different symptoms of alcohol dependence than do men. Men are more likely to report binge drinking and aggression, while women are more likely to report guilt and depression over their drinking. Nichols suggests that this difference may be causing many women to go undiagnosed, and explain some of the gender disparity in alcoholism diagnosis.
In the same issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Flannery et al (2007) report that women suffer greater cognitive impairment from alcohol abuse than men (see Reuters for summary). However, this study did not report any gender-wise control-vs-control or alcohol-vs-alcohol comparisons. The tests were on "motor speed, visuoperceptual processing, visuospatial processing, decision making, and cognitive flexibility." Some of these tasks have well documented gender differences without alcoholism, but if this was controlled for, it was not reported.
Someone asked me recently if I worried that I would run out of topics for Difference Blog. I don't see how that would be possible, when new research is constantly being generated. Yes, I've talked about alcohol before, but when I can find two pertinent articles in a single issue of a single journal -- I could never write fast enough to cover everything.
The thing that really strikes me about these two articles is that one of them seems to be saying that differences in alcoholism prevalence between men and women are not as high as we thought, and the other is saying that differences in alcoholism impact are higher than we thought. I'm more skeptical of Flannery's conclusions than Nichol's, but then again, Nichol's conclusions are less concrete.
In the same issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Flannery et al (2007) report that women suffer greater cognitive impairment from alcohol abuse than men (see Reuters for summary). However, this study did not report any gender-wise control-vs-control or alcohol-vs-alcohol comparisons. The tests were on "motor speed, visuoperceptual processing, visuospatial processing, decision making, and cognitive flexibility." Some of these tasks have well documented gender differences without alcoholism, but if this was controlled for, it was not reported.
Someone asked me recently if I worried that I would run out of topics for Difference Blog. I don't see how that would be possible, when new research is constantly being generated. Yes, I've talked about alcohol before, but when I can find two pertinent articles in a single issue of a single journal -- I could never write fast enough to cover everything.
The thing that really strikes me about these two articles is that one of them seems to be saying that differences in alcoholism prevalence between men and women are not as high as we thought, and the other is saying that differences in alcoholism impact are higher than we thought. I'm more skeptical of Flannery's conclusions than Nichol's, but then again, Nichol's conclusions are less concrete.