In summary, the genetics field has undergone a technological revolution, particularly in the past decade, allowing researchers to process large numbers of samples for their genetic studies and to efficiently interrogate the entire genome. Using these strategies, researchers have been able to identify a number of genes in which variations appear to contribute to the susceptibility to alcohol dependence. It is important to note, however, that the individual role of each of these genes, and the SNPs within them, is quite modest. This means that a given allele or SNP that has been found to be associated with alcohol dependence may increase the risk of alcoholism only incrementally. As a result, it would be a gross overinterpretation of the results obtained in human association studies to date to suggest that we currently have a means to identify people at greatest risk for alcohol dependence. With the exception of the strong protective effects of certain ADH and ALDH variants, each gene variant identified to date has a much smaller individual effect on alcoholism risk than, for example, a family history of alcoholism.
