Edinburgh Napier University

  This review presents evidence which implicates a role for menstrual cycle phase in the
response of pre-menopausal women to moderate alcohol intake. It is concluded that the majority of
published studies have suffered from poor methodological design and have employed inadequate means
of cycle phase identification. Contradictory and ill-founded Findings have been reported. The best
evidence to date suggests that women eliminate alcohol more rapidly during the mid-luteal phase of the
cycle. This finding needs to be substantiated by further studies