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This paper highlights gender peculiarities in the neuroscience of alcohol effects and draws attention to emerging problems due to simultaneous exposure to alcohol and environmental factors. All the available gender studies on alcohol show greater severity of alcohol-related damage, including brain damage, in females compared with males. The differences are due to physiological peculiarities that make women more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol. Today the trend to start consuming alcohol at a younger age, together with the growing number of women drinking excessively, is increasing the alcohol-related risks to women's health and justifying the need for better, gender-based studies of alcohol use and abuse. A further aspect to consider in this context is the risk of the occurrence of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders and foetal alcohol syndrome in the offspring of women who drink during pregnancy. Several lines of evidence indicate that prenatal ethanol exposure can influence cell proliferation and differentiation in the central nervous system, causing severe neurotoxicity and permanent birth defects.

In Italy, little is known about the problems related to alcohol drinking during pregnancy. In this paper, the Italian literature about this subject is briefly reviewed. This first Italian experience of a field study, aimed to the assessment of the prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) in an area in the Rome province (Lazio region) is reported. This in-field study was performed in the school years 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 in cooperation with American researchers, most from University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), and Italian researchers from University "la Sapienza" of Rome. First grade children (n(o) = 1,086) of primary school were contacted to enter in the in-school study for the detection of FAS and FASD and were examined by the experts team of clinicians, pediatrics, psychologists. Preliminary consideration and the implications of this study for FASD prevention are discussed.

The rate of women involved in alcohol abuse is rapidly increasing and the age of first use tends dramatically to decrease. The health and social costs are high both for the adverse effects on physical and psychological woman health, and for the teratogenic effect of alcohol on fetal development. The review takes in account physiological aspects of alcohol effects according to age and gender differences. Interaction between alcohol habit and environment are discussed together with the risk of co-exposure to alcohol and pollutants. The role of biomarkers may be invaluable for clinical utility, prevention and early intervention above all to avoid prenatal, not reversible damages. The update of alcohol studies shows the greater severity of alcohol damage in female and the need of gender-targeted intervention.

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is a large and rapidly increasing public health problem worldwide. Aside the full-blown FAS, multiple terms are used to describe the continuum of effects that result from prenatal exposure to alcohol, including the whole fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). The revised Institute of Medicine (IOM) Diagnostic Classification System and the diagnostic criteria for FAS and FASD are reported, as well as the formation of the four-state FAS International Consortium and its aims, as the development of an information base that systematizes data collection that helps to determine at-high-risk populations, and to implement and test a scientific-based prevention/intervention model for at risk women. The Consortium was further enlarged, with the inclusion of some more states (including Italy), leading to the formation of the International Consortium for the Investigation of FASD. The objectives of the Consortium are reported, as well as its previous activities, the South Africa and Italy Projects (active case ascertainment initiatives), and its future activities.

Alcohol abuse is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in western countries. In the last decade, the rate of women involved in alcohol abuse is increasing. This is particularly dangerous since alcohol abuse causes heavier damages in women than in men. This is due to physiological differences about body composition, enzymatic and hormonal patterns. At now gender studies are not enough and are to be deepened. Obtained results are synthetically described in this paper. Emerging problems are new habits of alcohol abuse, the decreasing age of first use in women and the teratogenic effect of alcohol on fetal development.

Addiction scene is showing rapid changes about substances and patterns of use/abuse. Increasing requirements from clinical and forensic fields to identify drugs of abuse and to find them at ever decreasing levels in biological samples, have led to a great improvement in the state of the art of analytical toxicology. This paper discusses various aspects of these developments highlighting possibilities and problems that make the toxicological determination to be evaluated with prudence, keeping in mind that these results involve legal aspects too. Special attention is focused to the so-called "designer drugs", to the outside laboratory assays and to the problems due to poly-drugs assumption.