We hypothesized that the genetic risk for AUD is likely to overlap with numerous traits relevant to addiction and psychiatric phenotypes, based on previous epidemiological data (Compton, Thomas, Stinson & Grant 2007), twin studies (Kendler, Heath, Neale, Kessler & Eaves 1993; Pickens, Svikis, McGue & LaBuda 1995; Knopik, Heath, Bucholz, Madden & Waldron 2009) and recent genetic correlations between alcohol consumption and neuropsychiatric traits (Clarke et al. 2017). We showed positive genetic correlations between AUDIT and lifetime cigarette smoking, as previously observed between alcohol consumption and daily cigarettes, and tobacco initiation (Vink et al. 2014; Nivard et al. 2016). We also observed shared genetic architecture across AUDIT and other alcohol-related traits from independent cohorts: alcohol consumption (Schumann et al. 2016; Clarke et al. 2017), and AUD diagnosis (P = 0.062; Gelernter et al. 2014). With regards to other psychiatric traits, we found a negative correlation with ADHD; but there were no other significant genetic correlations between AUDIT and psychiatric traits. This result is generally consistent with a recent GWAS by Clarke et al (2017), where they did not observe strong correlations between alcohol consumption and psychiatric conditions.
