Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 66, Issue 8, 15 October 2009, Pages 795-800
Biological Psychiatry

Research Report
Alcohol Consumption Indices of Genetic Risk for Alcohol Dependence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.018Get rights and content

Background

Previous research has reported a significant genetic correlation between heaviness of alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence (AD), but this association might be driven by the influence of AD on consumption rather than the reverse. We test the genetic overlap between AD symptoms and a heaviness of consumption measure among individuals who do not have AD. A high genetic correlation between these measures would suggest that a continuous measure of consumption may have a useful role in the discovery of genes contributing to dependence risk.

Methods

Factor analysis of five alcohol use measures was used to create a measure of heaviness of alcohol consumption. Quantitative genetic analyses of interview data from the 1989 Australian Twin Panel (n = 6257 individuals; M = 29.9 years) assessed the genetic overlap between heaviness of consumption, DSM-IV AD symptoms, DSM-IV AD symptom clustering, and DSM-IV alcohol abuse.

Results

Genetic influences accounted for 30%–51% of the variance in the alcohol measures and genetic correlations were .90 or higher for all measures, with the correlation between consumption and dependence symptoms among nondependent individuals estimated at .97 (95% confidence interval: .80–1.00).

Conclusions

Heaviness of consumption and AD symptoms have a high degree of genetic overlap even among nondependent individuals in the general population, implying that genetic influences on dependence risk in the general population are acting to a considerable degree through heaviness of use and that quantitative measures of consumption will likely have a useful role in the identification of genes contributing to AD.

Section snippets

Samples

We make use of data from a young adult Australian twin cohort (3) for genetic analyses and from spouses (32) of a second older twin sample (32, 33) for corroboration of factor analyses and test–retest reliability assessments.

Australian Young Adult Twin Panel (1989 Cohort)

Twin pairs for this volunteer sample were born 1964–1971, were identified in 1980–1982 through mass-media appeals and school systems, were raised together, and included a broad-spectrum of sociodemographic groups (34). As described elsewhere (3, 34), twins were not assessed

Sample Characteristics

As shown in Table 1, the young adult Australian twin cohort is characterized by near universal alcohol use and a high prevalence of heavy drinking and of DSM-IV alcohol dependence and abuse.

Alcohol Consumption Factor Score

For the twin sample, a single factor model adequately accounted for the covariation among the consumption measures, based on eigenvalues and scree plots. All five items had substantial factor loadings, with loadings of similar magnitude in the young adult twin cohort (.69–.92 for women; .68–.93 for men) and

Discussion

Using data from a general community twin sample, we have shown that a composite alcohol factor score is highly reliable (see also Agrawal et al. [39]), moderately heritable (50%), and has a high genetic correlation with AD symptomatology (rG = .97), indicating that genetic influences on dependence risk and consumption overlap considerably in the general population. We previously noted a smaller genetic association with confidence intervals (CIs) that excluded unity (rG = .63, CI: .53–.72) (29).

References (49)

  • Hansell NK, Agrawal A, Whitfield JB, Morley KI, Gordon SD, Lind PA, et al. (in review): Linkage analysis of alcohol...
  • S.Y. Hill et al.

    A genome wide search for alcoholism susceptibility genes

    Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet

    (2004)
  • K.S. Kendler et al.

    A joint genomewide linkage analysis of symptoms of alcohol dependence and conduct disorder

    Alcohol Clin Exp Res

    (2006)
  • C.A. Prescott et al.

    Genomewide linkage study in the Irish affected sib pair study of alcohol dependence: Evidence for a susceptibility region for symptoms of alcohol dependence on chromosome 4

    Mol Psychiatry

    (2006)
  • T. Reich et al.

    Genome-wide search for genes affecting risk for alcohol dependence

    Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet

    (1998)
  • J.H.ForoudT. Edenberg

    The genetics holism: Identifying specific genes through family studies

    Addict Biol

    (2006)
  • H.J. Edenberg et al.

    Association of alcohol dehydrogenase genes with alcohol dependence: A comprehensive analysis

    Hum Mol Genet

    (2006)
  • C. Johnson et al.

    Pooled association genome scanning for alcohol dependence using 104,268 SNPs: Validation and use to identify alcoholism vulnerability loci in unrelated individuals from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism

    Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet

    (2006)
  • E.O. Johnson et al.

    Indicators of genetic and environmental influence in alcohol-dependent individuals

    Alcohol Clin Exp Res

    (1996)
  • W.S. Slutske et al.

    The heritability of alcoholism symptoms: “Indicators of genetic and environmental influence in alcohol-dependent individuals” revisited

    Alcohol Clin Exp Res

    (1999)
  • C.A. Prescott et al.

    Genetic and environmental contributions to alcohol abuse and dependence in a population-based sample of male twins

    Am J Psychiatry

    (1999)
  • K.K. Bucholz et al.

    Can we subtype alcoholism?A latent class analysis of data from relatives of alcoholics in a multicenter family study of alcoholism

    Alcohol Clin Exp Res

    (1996)
  • A.C. Heath et al.

    The assessment of alcoholism in surveys of the general community: What are we measuring?Some insights from the Australian twin panel survey

    Int Rev Psychiatry

    (1994)
  • M.T. Lynskey et al.

    Limitations of DSM-IV operationalizations of alcohol abuse and dependence in a sample of Australian twins

    Twin Res Hum Genet

    (2005)
  • Cited by (74)

    • Toward more efficient diagnostic criteria sets and rules: The use of optimization approaches in addiction science

      2019, Addictive Behaviors
      Citation Excerpt :

      The optimal DCSR should be validated on a set of known correlates of the disorder that did not serve as DxCrit or OptCrit to examine if the rule performs at least as well as established alternative diagnostic schemes. Data were drawn from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcoholism and Related Conditions- III (NESARC-III; Grant et al., 2009). NESARC-III, conducted from 2012 to 2013, was sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

    • Genetic studies of alcohol dependence in the context of the addiction cycle

      2017, Neuropharmacology
      Citation Excerpt :

      Kendler et al. (2011) performed a GWAS which used a quantitative measure of symptoms of alcohol dependence in a general population from the United States consisting of 2357 European Americans and 812 African Americans subjects from the Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia (MGS2) control sample (Kendler et al., 2011). As compared to the dichotomous clinical diagnosis of alcohol dependence a symptom count of alcohol dependence phenotype is presumed to provide greater power for genetic analysis while remaining highly correlated with a clinical diagnosis (Grant et al., 2009; Whitfield et al., 2004). Subjects who reported drinking greater than 4 drinks in one day were retained and administered a 7-item questionnaire which assessed craving for alcohol, DSM-IV criterion for alcohol abuse (dangerous use) and criteria 1 (tolerance), 3 (loss of control), 5 (‘‘great deal of time … ’’), 6 (activities given up), and 7 (use despite knowledge of harm) for alcohol dependence.

    • Genes Associated with Alcohol Withdrawal

      2016, Molecular Aspects of Alcohol and Nutrition: A Volume in the Molecular Nutrition Series
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text