College attendance and its effect on drinking behaviors in a longitudinal study of adolescents

New research suggests that college attendance exacerbates the inborn propensity of certain young adults to become heavy alcohol users.

The implications of the findings aren't clear, said study lead author David Timberlake, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Irvine. Still, he said, “if your genetic makeup predisposes you toward drinking, it may be even more enhanced by attending college.”

To judge by surveys, colleges are full of heavy drinkers. According to a 1999 study by Harvard University, 44 percent of college students surveyed said they'd engaged in binge drinking within the previous two weeks. Binge drinking is defined as downing five drinks within two hours for men and four drinks within two hours for women.

The new study was designed to figure out if people who are genetically predisposed to become alcoholics would find themselves in special jeopardy if they attended college. In other words, how do genetics — a propensity to alcoholism — and environment — attending college — work together to influence a person's drinking behavior.

The researchers looked at surveys of high school students who were followed through college. They tracked 8,793 students, including 855 pairs of siblings. They then broke down the experiences of fraternal twins and identical twins.

According to Timberlake, looking at twins allowed the researchers to explore genetic predispositions since identical twins share the same genes.

The study findings appear in the June issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research .

The research suggests that simply attending college gives genetically susceptible students an extra boost toward heavy drinking, Timberlake said. They end up drinking more than one might expect even considering their genetics.

This makes sense to Aaron White, an alcohol researcher and assistant research professor at Duke University. “The ability of biology to influence drinking at any stage of life, including the college years, cannot be ignored,” he said.

Students who didn't go to college drank more than their college-bound peers during high school, but the reverse happened during college years.

What's next, Researchers need to figure out how to “increase the odds that all kids, including those with a genetic predisposition to drinking, will choose alternatives to drinking,” White said.

Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research : Contact Mary Newcomb at (317) 375-0819 or [email protected] or visit http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/ACER

Timberlake DS, et al. College attendance and its effect on drinking behaviors in a longitudinal study of adolescents. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 31(6), 2007.