Women become dependent on alcohol more quickly than men do, found a team of researchers from RTI International, Pavlov Medical University, Leningrad Regional Center of Addictions, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

In addition, alcohol more severely impairs women's cognitive functioning, including perceptual and visual planning and processing, working memory and motor control, the team found.

"Our studied showed that female alcoholics experience a greater decrement in cognitive and motor functions and sustain an accelerated decline in processing speed than males," said Barbara Flannery, PhD, research psychologist at RTI.

Patients diagnosed as alcoholic were tested on a variety of cognitive skills three weeks after completing a detoxification program. The same tests were given to nonalcoholic participants. Female alcoholics responded more slowly on tasks designed to measure reaction times than any of the other groups, the researchers found, which suggests that alcohol more significantly impairs women's working memory processes.

Female alcoholics scored lower than male alcoholics on tests of spatial planning, problem solving and cognitive flexibility. The female alcoholics were younger than the males, had a shorter duration of alcohol dependence, and fewer years of alcohol use.

The study suggests that compared to men, women experience greater cognitive problems due to alcoholism in addition to the already established findings of greater negative physiological effects.

The study was conducted from 2003 to 2005 in St. Petersburg, Russia at the Pavlov State Medical University and the Leningrad Regional Center of Addictions.