Alcohol drinking is often initiated during adolescence, and this frequently escalates to binge drinking. As adolescence is also a period of dynamic neurodevelopment, preclinical evidence has highlighted that some of the consequences of binge drinking can be long lasting with deficits persisting into adulthood in a variety of cognitive-behavioral tasks. However, while the majority of preclinical work to date has been performed in male rodents, the rapid increase in binge drinking in adolescent female humans has re-emphasized the importance of addressing alcohol effects in the context of sex as a biological variable. Here we review several of the consequences of adolescent ethanol exposure in light of sex as a critical biological variable. While some alcohol-induced outcomes, such as non-social approach/avoidance behavior and sleep disruption, are generally consistent across sex, others are variable across sex, such as alcohol drinking, sensitivity to ethanol, social anxiety-like behavior, and induction of proinflammatory markers.
Keywords: Adolescent; Alcohol; Behavior; Dopamine; Epigenetics; Neuroimmune; Neurophysiology; Sex.
Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.