The presence of an adolescent-limited genetic factor and an adult-onset genetic factor bears some resemblance to previously observed patterns of antisocial behavior across development. Moffitt (1993) characterized adolescent-limited and life-course-persistent patterns of antisocial behavior. As discussed in that work, problem behavior can begin quite early in life and proceed along a persistently high trajectory, or a trajectory that peaks in adolescence and diminishes thereafter. Although those distinctions were originally made in the context of an effort to discriminate between classes of juvenile delinquents and inform theories of antisocial behavior, the current findings could have applications for related research. In the present study, a subset of individuals might carry a high ‘genetic load’ from both the adolescent-limited genetic factor identified in these analyses (A2) and the adult-onset factor (A1); this would increase one’s liability to sustained high alcohol consumption from adolescence into adulthood. Others might harbor multiple risk variants that underlie only the adolescent-limited genetic factor, leading to temporally limited genetic risk to excessive consumption. Still others could carry genetic risk primarily from variants underlying the adult-onset factor, thus leading to
