Gender differences in the relationship between alcohol consumption and drink problems are largely accounted for by body water

It is widely reported that women drink less and have a lower prevalence of drink problems than men, but the gender differences in the relationship bet ween level of drinking and drink problems have rarely been investigated qua ntitatively. This paper reports results from the Medical Research Council N ational Survey of Health and Development (the 1946 British Cohort) when the subjects were 43 years old. Using 7-day recall for alcohol consumption and CAGE scores of 2, 3 or 3 for drink problems. it was found that the prevale nce of drink problems increased with Level of alcohol consumption. Women we re more likely than men to report drink problems at the same level of alcoh ol consumption. However this gender difference was largely accounted for by individual differences in weight of body water. Beer accounted for the exc ess of men's drinking over women's and the proportion of alcohol consumed a s beer was inversely related to drink problems. Eighty per cent of women an d 52% of men who had drink problems in the past year reported drinking less than an average of 3 U (women) or 4 U (men) a day in the past week As drin king levels in women begin to approach those in men, rates of drink problem s in women are likely to overtake those in men because of women's greater p hysiological sensitivity to the effects of alcohol.