To our knowledge, just one previous study on remission has defined remission in both the target subject and the family member. That study used a population-based twin sample to examine the genetic and environmental contributions to the likelihood of remission, defined as absence of symptoms regardless of drinking status. Familial influences accounted for 11% of the variance associated with remission in females (attributable to genetic influences shared with AUD) and 37% in males (attributable to environmental influences shared with the co-twin) which decreased the likelihood of remission (36). In the current study we used data from a high-risk family study, the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA), which has a high prevalence of lifetime AUD in the relatives of probands (19) and thus provides enough AUD-affected, and thus potentially remitted, proband-relative pairs to model persistent AUD, non-abstinent remission, 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
