Ladies, take note. If you have been partying hard lately and indulging in alcohol way too much, maybe it's time for you to bring a halt. As per a recent study, published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, binge drinking was found to be a significant contributor to liver injury and the researchers reveal that it may be more injurious to women. The study was conducted on four male and four female rats by the team of researchers from the University of Missouri. The rats were given the same amount of alcohol three times at 12-hour intervals and a statistically significant difference was discovered among the two genders.
As per the findings of the study, female rats who were of equal age and weight to male rats were more sensitive to alcohol and experienced alcoholic liver injury at a higher rate than male rats.
"We studied the similarities and differences of gender-specific responses to repeat binge drinking. Our research showed just three binge drinking episodes triggered a response for more injury in the female rats," said Indian-origin researcher Shivendra Shukla.
Apart from this, the blood alcohol concentration was double in female rats as compared to male rats, but not all damage in males and females reflected that ratio. A trigger for additional inflammation and damage was the fatty build-up in the liver, which was nearly four times in female rats.
"There's a protein called diacylglycerol kinase-alpha (DGKa) that has been shown in other studies to promote tumour growth and cancer. In our findings, this protein goes up 20 per cent in male rats, but increases 95 per cent in females," Shukla said.