INTELLIGENT people are at higher risk of suffering from alcohol problems than their less gifted friends, a study by the Medical Research Council has found.

Women, in particular, are more likely to drink heavily in their thirties if they are bright.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Public Health, have surprised the researchers, who expected clever professionals to know enough about the damage caused by alcohol to avoid overindulging.

They now suspect, however, that the stressful jobs of highflying professionals drive them to drink. Intelligent women may be particularly susceptible if they are struggling to do well in male-dominated professions.

The research, led by David Batty of the MRC’s social and public health sciences unit at Glasgow University, says: “An explanation might be that success in the workplace requires, in some circumstances, a willingness to drink frequently and to excess in social situations.”

Leonora Kawecki, a successful commercial lawyer, died at the age of 39 in 2003 after drinking heavily at work and social functions throughout her thirties.

Kawecki, from Yorkshire, handled multi-million-pound property deals, regularly entertained clients at champagne functions and travelled abroad to work on assignments.

Her sister, Julia Kawecki, said: “Like many other young professional women, Leonora had a busy social life and alcohol was very much a part of that.

“If she had been in a different sort of job things might have been different for Leonora.

“A few months before she died, Leonora talked about her work. She said she didn’t really like law. It was quite an aggressive environment.”

Julia added that her sister was a perfectionist and has wondered whether the obsessive trait from which some intelligent people suffer makes them more susceptible to alcoholism.

The researchers studied a group of 8,170 men and women born in Britain during one week in 1970. They compared their mental ability at age 10 with information about their alcohol consumption and drink problems at age 30.

The academics found that men and women with higher childhood mental ability scores had higher rates of problem drinking in adulthood. The increased risk of drink problems was higher for intelligent women than men.

The study found that men and women who confessed to drinking most days had the highest childhood mental ability scores, whereas those who reported that they never had alcohol had the lowest mental ability scores.

The proportion of women with a history of alcohol problems was highest among women with professional and managerial jobs. The study found that 47% of men and 22% of women were drinking in excess of the recommended limits of 21 units a week for men and 14 units a week for women.

The government is investigating how to deal with Britain’s heavy drinking culture, including the possibility of restricting shops’ cut-price promotions of alcohol. Ministers have asserted that a key problem is middle-class adults drinking at home.

The alcohol-related death rate in Britain continued to increase in 2006, rising from 12.9 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 13.4 in 2006, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. Rates have almost doubled between 1991 and 2006.

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