Researchers with St. Louis' Washington University School of Medicine have determined that women who begin drinking at a younger age face an increased likelihood of becoming dependent upon alcohol later in life.

"An early age at the onset of drinking is a strong predictor of subsequent alcohol dependence," said Richard A. Grucza, Ph.D., who authored the study. "About one in three individuals who start drinking at age 17 or younger become alcohol dependent. For those who wait until age 21 or older, that number is one in ten."

Grucza, an assistant professor of psychiatry at WU, was quoted in a press release about the study that was posted on the school's website:

"In our previous work, we found that women born after 1944 had a substantially higher risk for alcohol dependence compared to those born prior to that. Now we have found that women born during this 'high risk' period also began drinking earlier than their predecessors, and this earlier drinking might explain the higher rates of alcoholism.

As the age of drinking onset got lower for women, the rates of alcohol dependence increased. ...There is a lot of discussion about whether the minimum drinking age should be lowered again. Our findings would suggest that from a public-health point of view, lowering the legal drinking age might lead to increased rates of alcohol dependence."

Grucza and his team analyzed data that had been compiled during the 1991-1992 National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, which was completed in the early 1980s.

The results of the study are scheduled to be published in the August 2008 edition of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Labels: addiction, binge_drinking, girls