Drinkers' "kids" Show Attraction to Scent of Alcohol

By Peter Aldhous
New Scientist

Children of heavy drinkers may be primed to follow their parents' example from the first few months of life, suggest researchers in Philadelphia. They have found that babies whose parents are potential alcoholics spend more time mouthing toys with a whiff of alcohol than those with no smell.

Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp of the Monell Chemical Senses Center gave 62 breastfeeding mothers and their partners standard questionnaires designed to identify drinkers who are at risk of becoming alcoholics.

About 35 percent of the fathers and 19 percent of the mothers showed a potential drinking problem.

The infants, ranging in age from 6 to 13 months, were given a selection of plastic toys to play with. Each toy had a handle that was easy to grasp and a perforated base. Inside each toy was a cotton wool hall dosed with distilled water, ethanol or vanilla.

In the latest issue of alcoholics Mennefla and Beauchamp report that children from homes where one or both parents were at risk for alcoholism mouthed the drink-laced toy more than the other children.

This wasn't the case for the unscented toy, nor the toy dosed with vanilla – an odor that is chemically similar to ethanol.

The effect seems to be caused by a general preference for familiar odors, as infants whose mothers frequently used vanilla-scented air fresheners or other products showed more interest in the vanilla-dosed toy.

But many questions remain unanswered, Mennella says. For instance, the study did not reveal whether the sex of the drinking parent influenced the results. "Women who drink tend to live with men who drink heavily," she says.

She also stresses that a range of genetic and social factors may contribute to a familial tendency toward alcoholism. To further investigate the effects of the early experience of odor, Mennella is starting a study of 4- and 5-yearold children. She hopes to find out whether those with heavydrinking parents have unusually positive emotional responses to the smell of alcohol.

The latest animal research provides a further hint that sniffing alcohol early in life may be the start of some people's problems with alcohol.

In a paper due to appear next month in the journal Alcohol, researchers led by Norman Spear of Binghamton University in New York say that rats reared in cages with ethanol-scented litter have a greater liking for alcohol after they are weaned than those raised away from the smell of drink.

— Questions, comments? Call Star Tribune medical writer Gordon Slovut at 673–9083. Please leave your name and phone number.