It could also be that the environments of individuals growing up in families densely affected with alcoholism differ substantially from other subsets of the population, and thus a set of genes enriched for interaction effects with certain environmental factors might be influential to AUDs only in this subgroup. Gene-environment interaction has a strong influence on alcohol use and misuse, and a variety of socially restrictive environments including parental monitoring, marital status, and legal barriers to alcohol access have been shown to moderate genetic risk for AUDs (Dick and Kendler, 2012; Young-Wolff et al., 2011). Differences in either the types of genetic/environmental risk factors experienced or their degree of prevalence between populations contributes to the persistent difficulty in identifying a robust, coherent set of influences involved in the etiology of alcohol problems.
