title: Adolescent Women Induce Lower Blood Alcohol Levels Than Men in a Laboratory Alcohol Self-Administration Experiment.
abstract: Adolescence is a critical period for the development of alcohol use disorders; drinking habits are rather unstable and genetic influences, such as male sex and a positive family history of alcoholism (FH), are often masked by environmental factors such as peer pressure.
  
  
  
  We investigated how sex and FH modulate alcohol use in a sample of 18- to 19-year-olds from the Dresden Longitudinal Study on Alcohol use in Young Adults. Adolescents reported their real-life drinking in a TimeLine Follow-Back interview. They subsequently completed a training and an experimental session of free-access intravenous alcohol self-administration (i.v. ASA) using the computer-assisted alcohol infusion system to control for environmental cues as well as for biological differences in alcohol pharmacokinetics. During i.v. ASA, we assessed subjective alcohol effects at 8 time points.
  
  
  
  Women reported significantly less real-life drinking than men and achieved significantly lower mean arterial blood alcohol concentrations (aBACs) in the laboratory. At the same time, women reported greater sedation relative to men and rated negative effects as high as did men. A positive FH was associated with lower real-life drinking in men but not in women. In the laboratory, FH was not linked to i.v. ASA. Greater real-life drinking was significantly positively associated with higher mean aBACs in the laboratory, and all i.v. ASA indices were highly correlated across the 2 sessions.
  
  
  
  We conclude that adolescent women chose lower aBACs because they experienced adverse alcohol effects, namely sedation and negative effects, at lower aBACs than men. A positive FH was not apparent as risk factor for drinking in our young sample. The i.v. ASA method demonstrated good external validity as well as test-retest reliability, the latter indicating that a separate training session is not required when employing the i.v. ASA paradigm.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Jünger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.|Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York.
authors.forename: Gabriela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mick
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Seipt
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Markovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana.
authors.forename: Martin H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Plawecki
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana.|Roudebush Veterans Medical Center, Indianapolis, Indiana.
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: O'Connor
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Smolka
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Ulrich S
authors.initials: US
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000097:blood* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000097:blood* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D000067401:Blood Alcohol Content; D000431:Ethanol / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012646:Self Administration; D012727:Sex Characteristics
chemical_list: D000067401:Blood Alcohol Content; D000431:Ethanol
keywords: Computer-Assisted Alcohol Infusion System; Intravenous Alcohol Self-Administration; Subjective Alcohol Effects; Subjective Response to Ethanol