Bitter Brain Breakthrough: How a Single Chemical Could Curb Female Binge Drinking

Researchers at The Florey Institute have identified a brain chemical that could account for the varying alcohol consumption patterns between males and females.

Researchers at The Florey Institute have identified a brain chemical that could explain the different drinking habits of men and women. 

It comes down to how our brains detect bitter tastes and could be harnessed to help women stop binge drinking.

Gender Differences in Alcohol Consumption

Dr Leigh Walker led a study that showed that when a certain chemical is removed from the brain, males drink more and females drink less. But when the alcoholic drinks are sweetened, female consumption goes up. 

Dr Walker, an expert in the neurobiology of anxiety and alcohol use disorders, said the findings could pave the way for treatments designed to help women stop binge drinking. 

“The taste of alcohol is an important and often overlooked factor that drives alcohol preference, intake, and use,” Dr Walker said. 

“We have identified a chemical in the brain that makes alcohol taste bitter to females unless the drink is sweetened.”

Dr Walker said science has primarily focused on examining how male brains work. Her study, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, looked at how female brains might differ from male brains and identified differences in response to taste. The research centered on ‘CART’, a neuropeptide present in all speciesA species is a group of living organisms that share a set of common characteristics and are able to breed and produce fertile offspring. The concept of a species is important in biology as it is used to classify and organize the diversity of life. There are different ways to define a species, but the most widely accepted one is the biological species concept, which defines a species as a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce viable offspring in nature. This definition is widely used in evolutionary biology and ecology to identify and classify living organisms.” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]”>species and associated with energy balance, depression, anxiety, and reward-related behavior, including those around drinking alcohol. 

Study on Taste and Brain Chemistry

Dr Walker, working closely with graduate researcher Xavier Maddern and other Florey researchers, studied the effect of inhibiting CART in mice that were trained to drink alcohol. 

“Alcohol has an underlying bitter taste,” Dr Walker said. “When we inhibited CART in male mice their drinking increased. And when we knocked out the same brain chemical in female mice, they drank less. But when the alcohol was sweetened, the female mice drank more. This tells us that without CART, alcohol is unpalatable to females.” 

Alcohol use contributes to about 3 million global deaths each year with alcohol misuse accounting for 5.1 percent of the global disease burden, while rates of risky drinking and alcohol use disorders are rising in women much faster than in men.* 

“If we can find a way in future research to target the CART neuropeptide system, we may be able to create treatments to help women curb excessive alcohol use. And if we can work out how male and female brains differ it will open unprecedented opportunity to treat disorders of the brain in women, including alcohol use disorders,” Dr Walker said. 

Reference: “Cocaine and amphetamine regulated transcript (CART) mediates sex differences in binge drinking through central taste circuits” by Xavier J. Maddern, Bethany Letherby, Sarah S. Ch’ng, Amy Pearl, Andrea Gogos, Andrew J. Lawrence and Leigh C. Walker, 22 August 2023, Neuropsychopharmacology.
DOI: 10.1038/s41386-023-01712-2

The study was funded by the Jack Brockhoff Foundation.