STRESSED children are more likely to abuse alcohol as adolescents, say
researchers who have completed an eight-year study on monkeys. Measuring stress
hormones in the blood might help doctors predict future alcohol abuse, they
say.
Previous studies have shown that adults who lead stressful lives are more
likely to drink to excess than others. But Dee Higley of the US National
Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism near Washington DC wanted to know
whether a tendency for drinking later in life starts in infancy.
Higley and his colleagues kept 97 rhesus macaques under identical conditions,
except that 40 were separated…
