Research Shows Gender Differences in Addiction
The argument that there is no difference between the sexes holds little weight when it comes to drug abuse and addiction. According to a piece in the Psychiatric Times, studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) show that the molecular events that accompany drug abuse and addiction for men and women are different.
“It is dangerous at best, and completely wrong at worst, to assume that any neurological disorder has the same underlying causes in men and women, and thus to assume that treatments for the disorder will be essentially the same,” said Larry Cahill, PhD, in the Psychiatric Times.
Cahill is an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior at the School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine. “Yet that is precisely the assumption that continues to pervade much of both the clinically applied and basic science worlds.”
Jill Becker, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, noted that women begin using drugs at lower doses than men. In addition, drug use in women escalates more rapidly to addiction than men and they face a greater risk of relapse after abstinence. At the same time, women tend to enter treatment sooner after dependence develops.
Studies have also shown that there is a direct association between the menstrual cycle and substance abuse. Testing has found that fluctuations in steroid hormone levels during the menstrual cycle affect neural responses to rewards.
The same tests demonstrated that when men anticipate an uncertain reward, there was more activity in the ventral putamen than women. When receiving a reward, women showed more activity than men in the anterior medical prefrontal cortex.
While gender has been examined for years in terms of treatment methods and doses, this latest research could help to lead to better understanding of the differences in the addiction for men versus women and how to more effectively treat according to these differences.
Tags: Women
