Surging Estrogen Levels Could Drive Women To "Binge-Drinking": Study

Drinking alcohol when estrogen 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 estrogen 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 the 'extended amygdala', the BNST is a central hub for regulating stress-related brain activity, including mood, anxiety and depression.

The enhanced activity in the BNST correlated with the female mice's binge drinking behaviour, the researchers said.

"Estrogen 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 'estrogen' hormone levels throughout the estrous 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 estrogen 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 estrogen was high during the estrous cycle than when it was low," the authors said.

The intensified binge-drinking behaviour was related to heightened activity in the BNST, the researchers said.

"When a female takes her first sip from the bottle containing alcohol, those neurons go crazy. And if she's in a high-estrogen state, they go even crazier," Pleil said.

That extra boost of neural activity meant that the mice hit the bottle even harder, particularly within the first 30 minutes after the alcohol was made available, Pleil explained.

The study's findings could lead to new approaches for treating alcohol use disorder, the authors said. 

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