Greater resilience to psychiatric and substance use problems following trauma exposure has also been observed in women compared with men (DuMont et al., 2007, Schilling et al., 2007), so the same argument for differences in the underlying mechanisms can be made for sex as for population differences. The odds ratio for the interaction term in the AUD symptom model for EA women was in the same direction as in the model for EA men, so another possible explanation for the lack of interaction effects in EA women is reduced power (estimated at below 0.2) associated with a smaller number of EA women than men (n= 586 vs. 850). The one known GxE study of adverse events and alcohol phenotypes to test for sex differences was conducted with a small sample of adolescents and young adults in Germany (167 females and 142 males) (Laucht et al., 2009). A significant interaction was observed between early adversity and 5-HTTLPR on alcohol consumption in both sexes, but interaction effects with current stressful life events were observed for consumption and binge drinking only in males, suggestive of greater genotypic sensitivity in males to certain environmental stressors.
