Troy, N.Y. — With the recent news of dangerous side effects, women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are wondering about whether they should continue to take such estrogen-based medications that ease menopausal symptoms. But those who want to go off the drugs may have another side effect to worry about — an enhanced appetite for alcoholic beverages, according to a research team headed by Larry Reid, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The concern is based on a study led by Reid and published earlier this year in the journal Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior.

For the study, researchers administered the estrogen drug estradiol valerate to rats for about a month. When the researchers stopped administering the drug, they found that the animals drank significantly more alcohol than their counterparts (placebo-controls that were already drinking problematic amounts). Furthermore, the increased consumption of alcohol lasted for as long as the study did, which was several months.

Although estradiol valerate is not the same drug mixture used in HRT, it is similar enough to make the study’s results potentially relevant to women, Reid says.

“If women who stop hormone replacement therapy find that they are drinking more than usual, they should realize that this could be a side effect of the discontinuation of HRT,” Reid says. “They should probably seek professional help to curb their drinking.”

A guideline for problematic drinking for women is anything greater than one or two drinks a day.

Although the experiments in Reid’s study are among the first to show that treatment with estradiol can induce an increase in alcohol consumption, they are not the first to show a correlation between estrogen levels and alcohol consumption, Reid says. A study headed by P. Muti in 1998, for example, showed that women with a high level of estradiol (the most important of the three estrogens found in a women’s body) drank about three times more alcohol.

Reid collaborated on the study with scientists from Douglas Hospital Research Center at McGill University in Montreal.

Contact: Jodi Ackerman
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