and abstinent remission in both subjects. Greater AUD severity was associated with decreased likelihood of non-abstinent remission and increased likelihood of abstinent remission in population-based data and in previous work in COGA (10, 30, 37), consistent with other studies that found abstinent individuals had more severe AUD histories than non-abstinent individuals (27, 38, 39). Because AUD severity might influence familial associations of remission in a way similar to its association with familial transmission of AUD (40), we categorized remission as abstinent and non-abstinent. Modeling abstinent and non-abstinent remission in all family members with lifetime AUD allows for the possibility that abstinent and non-abstinent remitted individuals may have characteristics, like social responsiveness, that contribute to their ability to remit but that are different from those linked to their development of AUDs. The goals of this study were to estimate the strength of the association of probands’ persistent AUD, non-abstinent remission and abstinent remission (hereafter referred to as “AUD/remission status”) with relatives’ AUD/remission status, and to test whether this association differed in related and unrelated proband-relative pairs.
