Because our FHP group consisted of an equal number of light drinkers and moderate drinkers, we were able to directly determine if these FHP women differed from each other and the FHN group. There were no differences between light and moderate FHP women on depression scores, ratings of Drug Liking and balance scores. Further, after the high dose of alcohol, the FHN group was more impaired on the balance task compared to both light and moderate FHP women. These data are intriguing and suggest that in women, having an alcoholic father may be sufficient to confer greater risk compared to FHN women, but that moderate drinking or the family density of alcoholism and/or substance abuse (which was higher in FHP moderate drinkers) may increase this risk. Clearly these exploratory analyses were conducted with smaller sample sizes in the FHP subgroups (12 light drinkers and 12 moderate drinkers) relative to 21 women in the FHN group and need to be investigated further in larger samples.
