Since childhood adversity and a lack of the protective ADH1B-rs1229984 “A” allele both increase risk for problematic drinking behaviors, we investigated whether the association between ADH1B and drinking problems was stronger among individuals who experienced childhood adversity than among those who did not. We previously demonstrated ADH1B effects on alcohol consumption and AUD severity in a household sample of Israeli Jews (Meyers et al., 2013); we began the present study in the same sample by determining the association of early childhood adversity with these two alcohol phenotypes. We then tested for additive interaction of childhood adversity and ADH1B on these phenotypes. While previous studies of ADH1B-rs1229984 have focused on the protective effects of the minor “A” allele, here we focus on the lack of the protective allele (i.e., the GG genotype – which is the higher-risk genotype) for ease of interpretation. We consider childhood adversity as the moderator of the ADH1B-rs1229984/alcohol phenotype relationships (and not the opposite) to integrate these findings into two literatures. The first is the gene-environment interaction literature, which typically examines the environmental moderation of a genetic
