score also represents an improvement over AD symptom count measures, which are highly skewed. Our study also suggests that quantitative indices of alcohol consumption may allow investigators to indirectly examine genetic and genomic effects on AD vulnerability even in the absence of full diagnostic data, thereby greatly augmenting sample sizes and even further increasing power to detect modest allelic effects (40,41). It is hoped that future gene-discovery efforts using quantitative measures will be better able to identify the effects of polymorphisms that act across a range of vulnerability to alcohol use disorder, as well as their interplay with environmental influences.
