Beyond being useful for research purposes, researchers have begun to examine the potential of PRS to predict risk for medical outcomes in clinical settings. PRS for coronary artery disease (CAD), atrial fibrillation (AF), type 2 diabetes (T2D), inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), and breast cancer (BC) have been found to be as predictive of these diseases as well known monogenic mutations11, which tend to be rarer, and could lead to improved screening for larger numbers of individual who are at risk. Individuals in the top 5% of the PRS distributions had ~3 fold likelihood of having CAD, AF, T2D, IBS, or BC compared to the bottom 95%. For obesity, individuals in the top PRS decile were on average 13 kg heavier than those in the bottom decile12. These studies demonstrate the potential for identifying individuals at heightened risk for various medical conditions using PRS. Given that AUD is a moderately heritable trait and GWAS for alcohol-related phenotypes are beginning to identify numerous variants associated with these outcomes, PRS for alcohol-related outcomes may be also able to identify individuals at heightened risk of developing an AUD.
