T. Vannucchi, G. Villani - Vol. 7, Settembre 2001, num.3
Testo Immagini
Bibliografia Summary Riassunto
Indice
Analogie e differenze cliniche correlate
al sesso in una popolazione di alcolisti
Gender-related clinical analogies and differences
in a population of alcoholics
Many papers describe analogies and differences between male and female alcohol
abusers. The aim of this work is to clarify this topic while taking into consideration
the analogies and differences between in-patients’ families as regards alcoholism
and psychiatric comorbidity, which are frequently associated to abuse. A group
has been selected (68 patients, 18 females, 50 males, mean age 45.13 years with
a standard deviation of 13.46) among the patients who attended the SERT Alcoholic
Operative Unit of Prato during the period between October 1998 and September
1999. The subjects had to meet the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse
and assume excessive doses (according to the guidelines of the Royal Colleges
of Physicians, Psychiatrist and General Practitioners: > 24 gr/die for man
and > 16 gr/die for woman). Each patient underwent interview and history
was collected to evaluate some characteristics such as psychiatric comorbidity,
familiarity for alcohol abuse and drugs. With the exception of numerical values
of the two subgroups (73.53% males and 26.47% females), the mean daily assumption
(250 gr/die with a SD of 112.57 for males and 235 with a SD of 137.87 for females)
and mean age (50.20 years with a SD of 14.01 for males and 50.11 years with
a SD of 12.45 for females) are very similar. It was observed that psychiatric
disease onset precedes alcohol abuse both in females and males and that the
incidence of psychiatric comorbidity is very different between sexes (38% in
males and 83.33% in females). It may be observed that the absence of psychiatric
comorbidity correlates with low values of mean daily assumption in both sexes
(229 with a SD of 94.30 for males and 143 with a SD of 20.82 in females). Furthermore,
there are differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorder in the two subgroups.
Unipolar depression, which is the most frequent disorder in total (23.53%),
is present in 66.66% of females with psychiatric comorbidity and in 31.6% only
of males with psychiatric comorbidity. On the contrary, antisocial personality
disorder is more present in males with psychiatric comorbidity (31.58% as compared
to 6.66% in females). In males, differently than in females, anxiety disorders
are also present: the generalized anxiety disorder in 5.3% and panic disorder
in 15.8% of total males with comorbidity. The prevalence of drug abuse is very
similar in the two subgroups (20% of males and 22.22% of females) and is associated
in both sexes with a lower mean age (31.8 with a SD of 5.07 in males and 34.5
with a SD of 9.33 in females) and an higher mean daily assumption dose (308
with a SD of 93.43 in males and 198 with a SD of 51.88 in females) as compared
with the means of the subgroups. Familiarity for alcohol abuse is present in
70% of males and in 88% of females of our group. We can conclude that there
are, in this group of alcohol abusers, analogies between sexes for mean age
and mean daily assumption dose, but also some differences, such as the different
prevalence of sexes (males being far more numerous). Familiarity for abuse and
psychiatric comorbidity prevails in females, which may be explained by assuming
that more risk factors are necessary for females to develop the disorder.
