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Women and Breathalyzers

By Lawrence Taylor

If you are arrested for DUI and a breath test shows a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08% or higher, you are presumed guilty. It does not matter, of course, whether you are a man or a women: the laws do not discriminate. Maybe they should… Researchers at the University School of Medicine in Trieste, Italy, have found that the stomach lining contains an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol, and that women have less of this enzyme than men. To determine the relative effects of the enzyme, they gave alcohol both orally and intravenously to groups of alcoholic and non-alcoholic men and women. They found that women reached the same levels of blood alcohol as men after drinking only half as much.  With weight differences taken into account, they found that women reached BAC levels illegal in a DUI case after drinking 20 to 30 percent less alcohol than men...continue to full post

Full post as published by DUI Blog on January 31, 2011 (boomark / email).