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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2000;283:3060.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Research on monkeys followed up from birth to young adulthood suggests that future drinking may be predicted by response to stress during infancy, according to a new study by investigators at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the Swedish Medical Research Council (Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2000;24:644-650).

The study, led by J. Dee Higley, PhD, of the NIAAA, and Stephen Suomi, PhD, of the NICHD, involved 97 rhesus macaques that either remained with their mothers after birth or were reared with peers. During a stress test, cortisol levels of all the monkeys increased, although levels in the peer-raised monkeys were significantly higher than those in the mother-reared monkeys.

When the animals were young adults, they were allowed access to alcohol. Monkeys that responded to stress with high cortisol levels drank significantly . . . [Full Text of this Article]