Women have higher risk of injury than men post-drinking

Woman who find alcohol hard to resist even after three standard drinks are more likely to suffer from injury when compared with men, shows new research that includes patients from India.

While the risk of injury is similar for both men and women up to three standard drinks (containing 16 ml or 12.8 g of pure ethanol), the risk then increases more rapidly for women, becoming twice the risk to men around 15 drinks and three times the risk to men around 30 drinks.

"There is an increasing risk relationship between alcohol and injury, but risk is not uniform across gender, cause of injury, or country drinking pattern," said lead author, Cheryl Cherpitel from the Alcohol Research Group (ARG) of the Public Health Institute in the US.

In this study the drinks were reportedly consumed six hours prior to injury.

The risk of violence-related injury is consistently larger than the risk of other types of injuries, the study showed.

The researchers also found that the risk of injury from violence increases more rapidly as the volume of alcohol consumed increases.

The study looked at over 13,000 injured patients from 18 countries - Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, India, Ireland, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Sweden, and Switzerland.

The study appeared online in the scientific journal Addiction.