Women are 'born worriers'

Men are always complaining about it, and now scientists are saying the same - women are born worriers.

Research has shown that women have lower levels of a brain chemical that influences anxiety.

Having less of the chemical, an enzyme called COMT, appears to make a person more anxious and highly strung.

And, according to the latest findings, women with a certain version of the gene that makes the enzyme worry most of all.

Researchers in the US discovered the strong link between COMT and anxiety while investigating the roots of alcoholism.

Scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) combined DNA analysis, recordings of brain activity and psychological tests.

They found that women with the same gene variant had similarly high scores in tests that measure anxiety.

The women also had similar electroencephelograms (EEGs) - recordings of electrical activity in the brain as unique as fingerprints - showing characteristic hallmarks of anxious temperament.

A variant of the COMT gene called Val 158Met appeared to confer the greatest anxiety. Women with two copies of the gene, one inherited from each parent, seemed to be the greatest worriers.

But men having the same genetic make-up did appear to be extra anxious.

Dr Mary-Anne Enoch, a member of the research team at the NIAAA's Laboratory of Neurogenetics in Bethesda, Maryland, said: "The COMT Met158/Met158 genotype is associated with a threefold to fourfold decrease in COMT enzyme levels.

"Therefore, our study suggests that women with this genotype may be more vulnerable to anxiety because their COMT levels fall below a minimum threshold."

But the study also highlighted the fact that all women - not just those with the gene variant - were bigger worriers than men.

Previous studies had shown that women generally have lower COMT levels, said Dr Enoch.

This would be expected to make them more anxiety-prone. The NIAAA research found that women scored higher than men in psychological tests which used harm avoidance as a measurement of anxiety.

The results indicated that women experienced a higher state of general anxiety than men.

A total of 92 women and 57 men living in Bethesda, and 149 women and 103 men from a group of Native Americans in Oklahoma took part in the study.

Dr Enoch said men with the double Met158 gene variant did not rank as highly as women in the anxiety tests, and their scores were similar to those of men with other forms of the gene.

"Men naturally tend to have lower anxiety scores," she said. "But it's possible that there may be a caveat here, that a larger sample population may be necessary to study the association in men."

The findings were published in the journal Psychiatric Genetics.

A recent study at the same laboratory found that the Met158/Met158 variant was also associated with a higher level of brain response to pain and stress.

Other studies have indicated an influence of COMT levels on mental awareness as well as psychiatric diseases such as alcoholism, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders.


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