Traumatic stress-enhanced alcohol drinking: Sex differences and animal model perspectives.

Purpose Of Review: Stress is associated with alcohol drinking, and epidemiological studies document the comorbidity of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with higher comorbid prevalence in females than in males. The aim of this paper is to highlight information related to sex differences in stress-enhanced alcohol drinking from clinical studies and from preclinical studies utilizing an animal model of traumatic stress.

Recent Findings: Stress is associated with alcohol drinking and relapse in males and females, but there are sex differences in the alcohol-related adaptation of stress pathways and in the association of different prefrontal regions with stress-induced anxiety.

Differential c-Fos Response in Neurocircuits Activated by Repeated Predator Stress in Male and Female C57BL/6J Mice with Stress Sensitive or Resilient Alcohol Intake Phenotypes.

Comorbidity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) worsens the prognosis for each of these individual disorders. The current study aimed to identify neurocircuits potentially involved in regulation of PTSD-AUD comorbidity by mapping expression of c-Fos in male and female C57BL/6J mice following repeated predator stress (PS), modeled by exposure to dirty rat bedding. In experiment 1, the levels of c-Fos in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH) and the nucleus accumbens shell were higher after the second PS vs the first PS, indicating a sensitized response to this stressor.