Prenatal and Adult Androgen Activities in Alcohol Dependence

April 2017 in “ Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica ”

Bernd Lenz, Christiane Mühle, Birgit Braun, Christian Weinland, Polyxeni Bouna-Pyrrou, Juergen Behrens, S. Kubis, K. Mikolaiczik, Marc Muschler, S. Saigali, M. Sibach, Petya Tanovska, Sabine Huber, Ulrich Hoppe, Anna Eichler, Hartmut Heinrich, Gunther H. Moll, Anne Engel, Tamme W. Goecke, Matthias W. Beckmann, Peter A. Fasching, Christian P. Müller, Johannes Kornhuber

androgen prenatal androgen liver transaminase alcohol withdrawal stress tobacco consumption

TLDR Higher prenatal and adult androgen levels are linked to alcohol dependence and withdrawal severity.

The study investigated the influence of prenatal and adult androgen activities on alcohol dependence, involving 200 early-abstinent alcohol-dependent in-patients and 240 controls, as well as 134 pregnant women and their children. Results showed that male alcohol-dependent patients had higher prenatal androgen loads, which correlated with liver transaminase activities and alcohol withdrawal severity. Higher prenatal androgen loads and increasing androgen levels during withdrawal predicted earlier and more frequent hospital readmissions. Additionally, stress, alcohol, and tobacco consumption, and lifetime stressors in pregnant women were positively related to their children's prenatal androgen loads. These findings suggested that androgen activities and maternal behaviors during pregnancy could be novel targets for preventing and treating alcohol dependence.