In conclusion, we discovered that the APA’s DSM-5 definition of alcohol-related problems is a heritable phenotype with varying genetic effects across the individual symptoms with both shared and non-shared genetic variance between them. Though tentative and in need of replication in larger samples, these findings lend support to the use of composite scores, such as factor scores or symptom count as phenotype, as well as the application of genomic structural equation model methods in future studies.
