Wellness
Surges in oestrogen promote binge drinking in females, shows study
The hormone oestrogen regulates binge drinking in females, causing them to “pregame” – consume large quantities of alcohol in the first 30 minutes after it’s offered, according to a new preclinical study.
The study establishes–for what is thought to be the first time–that circulating oestrogen increases binge alcohol consumption in females and contributes to known sex differences in this behaviour.
The findings could lead to novel approaches for treating alcohol use disorder.
“We know a lot less about what drives alcohol drinking behaviour in females because most studies of alcohol use have been done in males,” said senior author Dr. Kristen Pleil, an associate professor of pharmacology.
Yet females, too, overindulge and are more susceptible to the negative health effects of alcohol than males.
Recent studies indicate that, during the pandemic lockdown, women increased their heavy alcohol consumption more than men. That behaviour has important consequences for women’s health, said Dr. Pleil, “because many studies show this pattern of drinking enhances alcohol’s harmful effects.”
Indeed, women had many more alcohol-related hospital visits and complications than men during and since the pandemic.
In a 2021 study, Dr. Pleil and her team showed that a specific subpopulation of neurons in a brain region called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) were more excitable in female mice than in males. This enhanced activity correlated with their binge drinking behaviour.
But what makes this neural circuit more excitable in females?
“Oestrogen has such powerful effects on so many behaviours, particularly in females,” Dr. Pleil said. “So, it makes sense that it would also modulate drinking.”
To assess oestrogen’s potential involvement, the researchers, including first author Dr. Lia Zallar, who was a graduate student in the Pleil lab at the time of the research, began by monitoring the hormone levels throughout oestrous cycle of female mice.
Then, they served up the alcohol. They found that when a female has a high level of circulating oestrogen, she drinks much more than on days when her oestrogen is low.
That enhanced bingeing behaviour was reflected in heightened activity in those same neurons in the BNST.
“When a female takes her first sip from the bottle containing alcohol, those neurons go crazy,” Dr. Pleil said. “And if she’s in a high-oestrogen state, they go even crazier.”
That extra boost of neural activity means the mice hit the bottle even harder, particularly within the first 30 minutes after the alcohol was made available, a behaviour Dr. Pleil refers to as “front-loading.”
Cell-surface receptors allow oestrogen to act fast
Although the researchers suspected oestrogen would have an effect on drinking, they were surprised by its mechanism of action.
This steroid hormone typically regulates behaviours by binding to receptors that then travel to the nucleus, where they alter the activity of specific genes—a process that could take hours. However, Dr. Pleil and her team realised that something else must be happening when oestrogen infused directly into the BNST excited the neurons and triggered binge drinking within minutes.
So, the researchers tested oestrogen that had been doctored so it could not enter cells and bind to nuclear receptors—a feat of chemical engineering performed by Dr. Jacob Geri, assistant professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
They determined that when oestrogen promotes bingeing, the hormone is binding to receptors on the neurons’ surface, where it directly modulates cell-cell communication.
“We believe this is the first time that anybody has shown that during a normal oestrous cycle, endogenous oestrogen made by the ovaries can use such a rapid mechanism to control behaviour,” Dr. Pleil said. That rapid action drives the front-loading of alcohol when oestrogen is high.
The team identified the oestrogen receptor that mediates this effect and determined that it is expressed in the excited BNST neurons and in neurons from other brain regions that excite them. The researchers are now investigating the signalling mechanisms for this effect, and they will also examine whether the same system regulates drinking in males.
“All of the infrastructure is there in males, too: the oestrogen receptors and the basic circuit organization,” Dr. Pleil said. The only difference will be the source of the oestrogen, which in males without an ovarian source relies on local conversion of testosterone to oestrogen in the brain.
Inhibiting the enzyme that synthesises oestrogens could offer a novel treatment for selectively reducing alcohol consumption when hormone levels surge. An FDA-approved version of such an inhibitor is currently used to treat women with oestrogen-sensitive cancers.
“Combining this drug with compounds that modulate the downstream effects of the chemicals produced by the BNST neurons could potentially provide a new, targeted approach for treating alcohol use disorder,” Dr. Pleil said.
Cervical cancer elimination in the EU is becoming achievable as HPV vaccination coverage rises, a new report says.
As Europe marks European Immunisation Week 2026, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said progress in human papillomavirus vaccination is continuing across the EU and European Economic Area.
All EU and European Economic Area countries now recommend HPV vaccination for adolescent girls and boys as part of their immunisation programmes, marking a major step forward in Europe’s cancer prevention efforts.
Bruno Ciancio, head of unit, directly transmitted diseases and vaccine preventable diseases at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said: “The elimination of cervical cancer in the EU/EEA is becoming an achievable goal, thanks to the HPV vaccination programmes.
“The progress we are seeing across Europe demonstrates what can be accomplished when countries invest consistently in effective immunisation strategies.
“We are closely monitoring this progress and actively supporting countries to accelerate uptake and move faster towards cervical cancer elimination.”
According to the report, three EU and European Economic Area countries, Iceland, Portugal and Norway, have reached the 2024 EU Council Recommendation target of 90 per cent HPV vaccination coverage among girls by the age of 15.
Fifteen years after HPV vaccination programmes were introduced in Europe, a growing body of evidence confirms the vaccine is highly effective in preventing cervical cancer.
Large-scale studies from Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as other parts of the world, have shown significant reductions in HPV infections and precancerous lesions, which are abnormal cell changes that can develop into cancer if left untreated, alongside falling cervical cancer rates among vaccinated women.
Since 2020, European countries have reported a decreased incidence of cervical cancer among vaccinated women.
Studies from Sweden, Denmark and the UK show that early administration of the vaccine increases its full protective potential.
A Swedish study suggested that vaccinating girls before their 17th birthday reduced the incidence of cervical cancer by 88 per cent.
An additional six-year follow-up found a sustained reduction in cervical cancer risk and a population-level decline in invasive cervical cancer incidence after HPV vaccination.
The report showed that vaccination programmes and health system design are critical factors in reaching high levels of HPV vaccination coverage.
Evidence from across Europe showed that school-based vaccination programmes are particularly effective and tend to reach higher levels of coverage among both girls and boys.
Mental health
Poor mental health, poverty and pollution significantly raise women’s heart failure risk – study
Poor mental health, poverty and pollution can raise women’s heart failure risk, with up to one in four cases potentially preventable, a study has found.
UK Biobank data from more than 230,000 women suggest that depression, socioeconomic hardship and exposure to polluted environments are linked to a significantly higher risk of heart failure in women.
Heart failure happens when the heart becomes too weak or too stiff to pump blood effectively around the body.
High blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes are among the better-known risk factors often targeted in public health campaigns.
Peige Song from China’s Zhejiang University and her team found that living in polluted areas, having poor mental wellbeing, facing socioeconomic deprivation and experiencing chronic inflammatory conditions such as lupus, in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues, make women more prone to heart failure.
These risks, however, are often overlooked.
The researchers found that mental wellbeing, environmental exposures, socioeconomic circumstances and reproductive history together contributed almost as much risk for heart failure as all well-known risk factors combined.
The study also found that risk rises with socioeconomic hardship and chronic inflammatory conditions such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, approaching the impact of conventional risk factors.
Song said: “[The study] is a call to redefine prevention in women’s cardiovascular health, integrating biological, psychosocial and structural determinants into a unified, equitable approach.
“One in four heart-failure cases in women could be prevented if all under-recognised risk factors were eliminated, assuming causal relationships.”
While completely eliminating all risks is not realistic, Song said “even partial reductions through better mental health services, social equity policies and environmental regulations could yield significant public health benefits”.
Catherine Pirkle, a women’s health specialist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the US, who was not involved in the study, said: “These calculations show convincingly that under-recognised and female-specific risk factors contribute significantly to heart failure in women, independently of the well-established ones.”
Song said: “It’s important to understand that heart health is influenced by more than just blood pressure or cholesterol.
“Factors like mental wellbeing, reproductive milestones and socioeconomic conditions all matter. Awareness and advocacy for comprehensive, gender-sensitive care are key.”
Resistance training improves hip strength, balance and flexibility during menopause and may also improve lean body mass, research suggests.
A study of 72 active women aged 46 to 57 found those who completed a 12-week supervised programme saw greater gains than those who kept to their usual exercise routines.
None of the participants were taking hormone replacement therapy.
The supervised, low-impact resistance exercise programme focused on strength at the hip and shoulder, dynamic balance and flexibility.
Participants used Pvolve equipment, including resistance bands and weights around the hips, wrists and ankles, and also lifted dumbbells of varying loads.
Women in the resistance training group showed a 19 per cent increase in hip function and lower-body strength, a 21 per cent increase in full-body flexibility and a 10 per cent increase in dynamic balance, meaning the ability to stay stable while moving.
Those in the usual activity group did not show any significant improvements.
Previous studies have assessed the decline in lower limb strength and flexibility during menopause, but this is said to be the first study to compare the effect of resistance training on muscle strength and mass before, during and after menopause.
This was done by including participants in different phases of menopause rather than following the same participants over a long timeframe.
Francis Stephens, a researcher at the University of Exeter Medical School in the UK, said: “These results are important because women appear to be more susceptible to loss of leg strength as they age, particularly after menopause, which can lead to increased risk of falls and hip fractures.
“This is the first study to demonstrate that a low-impact bodyweight and resistance band exercise training programme with a focus on the lower limbs, can increase hip strength, balance, and flexibility.
“Importantly, these improvements were the same in peri- and post-menopausal females when compared to pre-menopausal females, suggesting that changes associated with menopause do not mitigate the benefits of exercise.”
Although one of the researchers sits on Pvolve’s clinical advisory board, the researchers said the company did not sponsor the study or influence its results.
Stephens added that any progressive resistance exercise training focused on lower-body strength is likely to yield the same results.
He said: “The important point is for an individual to find a type of exercise, modality, location, time of day etc., that is enjoyable, sustainable, and improves everyday life.
“The participants in the present study reported an improvement in ‘enjoyment of exercise,’ and some are still using the programme since the study finished.”
Kylie Larson, a women’s health and fitness coach and founder of Elemental Coaching, who was not involved in the study, said the results were compelling.
She said: “This is particularly exciting for those that tend to think of menopause as ‘the end’. The study proves that if you incorporate strength training you can still make improvements to your muscle mass and strength, which will also have a positive ripple effect to your ability to manage your body composition.
“In addition, staying flexible and being able to balance are both keys to a healthy and functional second half of life.”
Participants in the study did four classes a week for 30 minutes each session, but Larson said even half that amount of strength training can go a long way, particularly if you emphasise progressive overload, which means gradually increasing muscle challenge through more weight.
Larson said: “Gradually increasing the challenge is what drives real change.
“Lifting heavier over time is what builds strength, protects your bones, and keeps your body resilient through menopause and beyond.”
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