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STRESSED children are more likely to abuse alcohol as adolescents, say
researchers who have completed an eight-year study on monkeys. Measuring stress
hormones in the blood might help doctors predict future alcohol abuse, they
say.

Previous studies have shown that adults who lead stressful lives are more
likely to drink to excess than others. But Dee Higley of the US National
Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism near Washington DC wanted to know
whether a tendency for drinking later in life starts in infancy.

Higley and his colleagues kept 97 rhesus macaques under identical conditions,
except that 40 were separated from their mothers at birth. At six months, the
separated monkeys responded to stressful situations by releasing, on average, 25
per cent more of the stress hormone cortisol into their blood than those raised
by their mothers. Cortisol levels also varied within each of the two groups by
up to two-fold, reflecting the individual makeup of different monkeys.

When the monkeys were three to five years old, they were put in groups and
offered as much of a sweetened solution of 8.5 per cent alcohol as they wanted.
Most proved to be social drinkers, consuming the equivalent of two or three
glasses of wine. A fifth of them drank little or nothing, and another fifth got
drunk, showing signs of inebriation. Heavy drinkers tended to have shown high
levels of cortisol years before, whether or not they had been separated at birth
or had naturally high cortisol levels.

鈥淲e believe these results generalise to humans,鈥� Higley says. He suggests
that children with higher cortisol levels might benefit from intervention, such
as being taught to manage stress better.

But the link between alcoholism and cortisol is not simple, warns Robert
Cloninger, an alcoholism expert at Washington University in St Louis. People
prone to anxiety are not necessarily prone to alcoholism, but novelty seekers
are. Both traits correlate to some extent with cortisol levels, he says.

鈥淐ortisol seems to be part of the picture. But parents shouldn鈥檛 think they
can measure their children鈥檚 cortisol levels to find out which will be
补濒肠辞丑辞濒颈肠蝉.鈥�