Older women's cognitive and affective response to moderate drinking.
OBJECTIVE
In this paper we investigated the question, how do older women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol differ from those who do not drink on measurements of cognitive function, memory, affect and health?


METHODS
The nonprobability sample of female participants (n=182) averaged 75 years of age and had a Mini Mental State Examination scores of 28. The participants were asked to indicate whether they drank alcohol or abstained (yes/no) and if they indicated that they did drink, to describe how many drinks they consumed in a given period of time (day/week/month).


RESULTS
None of the participants acknowledged drinking more than 2 drinks a day. Caucasian women had the largest number of moderate drinkers (53% vs 47%), while the majority of African-American and Hispanic women reported not drinking. The moderate drinkers reported less depression, had higher self-reported health, performed better on instrumental everyday tasks, had stronger memory self-efficacy, and used more strategies to improve memory performance. In addition, these women had higher performance on tests of executive function: attention, concentration, psychomotor skills, verbal-associative capacities, and oral fluency.


CONCLUSIONS
The circumstances under which people drink are complex and were not evaluated in this study. Therefore, rather than endorsing drinking behavior, these findings suggest that future research might examine why elders make the decision to drink, the circumstances that predispose women to drink (alone/with others), and other qualities that characterize female drinkers over the age of 65.
Zimmerman
Teena
T
The University of Texas at Austin, School of Nursing, Austin, Texas 78701, USA. tzimmerman@mail.nur.utexas.edu
McDougall
Graham J
GJ
Becker
Heather
H
D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000339:Affect / Q000187:drug effects*; D000368:Aged; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000187:drug effects*; D000431:Ethanol / Q000494:pharmacology; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000187:drug effects; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales
D000431:Ethanol