Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Research Article

Gender Differences in the Relationship between Alcohol Use and Depressive Symptoms in St. Petersburg, Russia

¹Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, USA

²The Biomedical Center, St Petersburg, Russian Federation, Russia

³Saint Petersburg, State University, St Petersburg, Russian Federation, Russia

⁴Pavlov State Medical University, St Petersburg, Russian Federation, Russia

*Corresponding Author:

Nadia Abdala
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health
Yale University, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA
Tel: +1- 203-785-2747
Fax: +1-203-785-3260
E-mail: nadia.abdala@yale.edu

Received April 11, 2012; Accepted May 16, 2012; Published May 20, 2012

Citation: Zhan W, Shaboltas AV, Skochilov RV, Kozlov AP, Krasnoselskikh TV (2012) Gender Differences in the Relationship between Alcohol Use and Depressive Symptoms in St. Petersburg, Russia. J Addict Res Ther 3:124. doi:10.4172/2155- 6105.1000124

Copyright: © 2012 Zhan W, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background:
Gender differences in the relationship between alcohol use and depressive symptoms are inconsistent, and few studies have addressed this issue in Russia. Because this finding may have important implications for interventions to reduce alcohol misuse or alcohol related problems in Russia, we conducted a study to investigate whether the association between alcohol use and depressive symptoms differs by gender among people at high risk for HIV
Methods:
We used the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and the 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale to measure alcohol use and depressive symptoms among 307 patients who attended a clinic for sexually transmitted infections in St. Petersburg, Russia. Logistic regression models were applied for the analysis.
Results:
The comparison of data between men and women revealed a significant quadratic term of alcohol use and significant interactions between alcohol use and gender on depressive symptoms. Men with an AUDIT score in the first and fourth quartiles were more likely to report depressive symptoms in comparison to men in the second quartile. Their Odds Ratios (ORs) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs) were 7.54 (2.00-28.51) and 5.06 (1.31-19.63), respectively. Among women, a linear trend was observed such that those who misused alcohol were three times more likely to have depressive symptoms than those who did not misuse alcohol (OR = 3.03, 95% CI, 1.05-8.80).

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