Dr Consuelo Guerri is the Head of Cellular Pathology at the Prince Philip Research Center. Valencia.

On November 28, 2019 at the 2nd Edtion of the Days on Addiction and Women: Forgotten and Invisible, Dr Consuelo Guerri presented to us some of the results obtained from her investigations over more than forty years, in which she has highlighted the differences in the effects that alcohol consumption causes in women. These differences may be left hidden if the effect is considered to be the same in men than in women, something that basic research has brought to light.

The differential sex-based connection that the brain presents, at the cortical and subcortical level, where women and female rodents have a greater connection, causes differential behaviors related to greater analytical analysis in males along with greater coordinated ability and memory spatial with respect to females. There are thus differences in behavior due to sex and gender at all levels of organization, which is also related to differences in the appearance of disorders, which implies that a differential treatment must also be considered. 

Using an analysis of gender differences (a view from a gender perspective), it is observed that in our country the consumption of alcohol in adolescence is higher in girls than in boys. Related with this, the damage associated with situations that cause stress is greater in girls, especially when traumatic situations have occurred in early life; this entails an early start in alcohol consumption as well as the intake of larger amounts. Her research group has shown that the damage in neuroinflammation caused by alcohol consumption is also different in males than in females, as well as their recovery. She indicated that the reversibility of the pathologies derived from alcohol consumption is more unlikely in women than in men. Therefore, the data obtained indicate that the female gender is more vulnerable than the male gender to the neurotoxic and addictive effects of alcohol.