also different by gender, thus female rats tend to have higher GAD1 level than males in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, while male rats exhibited higher level of GAD2 than females in both brain areas (Alele and Devaud, 2005). Overall, gender differences may occur at many levels of alcohol addiction, from observed behavioral changes, neuroadaptive functions, to underlying genetic variations. Evaluation of gender specific effects in physiological and genetic studies may assist in understanding of underlying mechanisms of compulsive addicted behaviors and have clinical implications on the influences of drug treatment response among addictive individuals. Potential gender differences in GAD genetic associations we reported may concert with behavioral and gene expression findings reported in the literature, although the underlying physiological mechanism requires further study.
