The contribution of genetic variants to risk for AUD is spread across a large number of genes, probably at least hundreds, that act through many pathways and interact with the environment (for recent reviews see (Edenberg and Foroud, 2013, Rietschel and Treutlein, 2013, Hart and Kranzler, 2015)). Most variants have very small effects on risk. This critical review will focus on the set of genes with the strongest effect on risk for AUD, the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) genes. There is very strong evidence that variations in ADH and ALDH genes affect alcohol consumption and the risk for AUD.
