Researchers from the USA found that changes in the brains of female rats exposed to alcohol appear earlier than in males, potentially guiding personalised treatments for women. 

The researchers at Scripps Research, California, studied the noradrenergic system – a brain network that controls the body’s fight-or-flight response and helps regulate stress, attention and emotional processing. 

Marisa Roberto, leader of the study at Scripps Research, said: “We previously studied the noradrenergic system only in male rats and saw that it was dysregulated following chronic alcohol exposure. This time, we wanted to study whether the same changes occur in females.” 

The researchers found that the changes in the female brain appeared much earlier than in males, and that communication between brain cells was affected when exposed to a low amount of alcohol, when in males this occurred only after alcohol dependence. When using two different drugs that act on the noradrenergic system and are already approved for other medical conditions, they found that one lowered drinking in both non-dependent and dependent female rats, while the other only worked after dependence had set in.  

Next, the researchers plan to explore if these stress-related drugs could also mitigate other symptoms associated with alcohol dependency. 

The study was published in Biological Psychiatry.