Wang G J, Volkow N D, Fowler J S, Pappas N R, Wong C T, Pascani K, Felder C A, Hitzemann R J
Medical Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 1998 Nov;22(8):1850-4.
It is generally believed that women are more vulnerable to alcohol's toxic effects than men. Studies in male alcoholics have consistently shown reductions in brain glucose metabolism. However, such studies have not been done in female alcoholics. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if similar or worse brain metabolic abnormalities occurred in female alcoholics. For this purpose, we measured regional brain metabolism with positron emission tomography and [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose in 10 recently detoxified female alcoholics and compared it with that in 12 age-matched female controls. There were no differences between alcoholics and control females in regional brain glucose metabolism whether we used regions of interest analysis or statistical parameter maps methods. These results do not support a higher toxicity for the effects of alcohol in the female brain, as assessed with regional brain glucose metabolism, because metabolic values in female alcoholics did not differ from those of controls, whereas metabolic values in male alcoholics are generally lower than those in controls. However, this study is confounded by the fact that the severity of alcohol use in these female alcoholics was less than that of the male alcoholics previously investigated in positron emission tomography studies. Future studies in male subjects with alcoholism of moderate severity are required to address gender differences in sensitivity to alcohol effects in brain metabolism.
人们普遍认为，女性比男性更容易受到酒精毒性作用的影响。对男性酗酒者的研究一直表明其大脑葡萄糖代谢降低。然而，此类研究尚未在女性酗酒者中开展。本研究的目的是评估女性酗酒者是否会出现类似或更严重的脑代谢异常。为此，我们用正电子发射断层扫描和[18F]氟脱氧葡萄糖测量了10名近期戒酒的女性酗酒者的局部脑代谢，并将其与12名年龄匹配的女性对照者进行比较。无论是采用感兴趣区分析还是统计参数图方法，酗酒女性和对照女性在局部脑葡萄糖代谢方面均无差异。这些结果不支持就局部脑葡萄糖代谢评估而言酒精对女性大脑具有更高毒性的观点，因为女性酗酒者的代谢值与对照者并无差异，而男性酗酒者的代谢值通常低于对照者。然而，本研究因这些女性酗酒者的饮酒严重程度低于先前正电子发射断层扫描研究中所调查的男性酗酒者这一事实而受到干扰。需要对中度酗酒的男性受试者开展进一步研究，以探讨大脑代谢中酒精效应敏感性方面的性别差异。
