A study involving teenagers in Ireland has found a single glass of wine or beer at the age of 14 can help a young teenager along the path to binge drinking.

Early alcohol experience is one of a wide range of factors that can be used to identify future binge drinkers, new research has shown.

Others include personality traits such as risk and sensation seeking, family history, genetics and brain structure.

Combined together, they were able to predict who from a large group of 14-year-olds would be binge drinking by the age of 16 with 70% accuracy.

Having even a single alcoholic drink at the age of 14 was shown to be a "powerful" predictor of binge drinking, possibly because of its association with risk-taking.

UCD lecturer Robert Whelan said: “Our goal was to develop a model to better understand the relative roles of brain structure and function, personality, environmental influences and genetics in the development of adolescent abuse of alcohol.

“This multidimensional risk profile of genes, brain function and environmental influences can help in the prediction of binge drinking at age 16 years.”

Dr Hugh Garavan who co-led the study, said the vulnerable period between the ages of 14 and 16 was "critical" to a young person's future drinking behaviour.

A computer was used to analyse a wealth of data on more than 2,000 14-year-olds from England, Ireland, France and Germany.