correlations with insomnia, ever having smoked and most psychiatric disorders, findings that are consistent with phenotypic associations in the epidemiological literature35–37 and genetic correlations reported from the UKBB and 23andMe GWASs and their meta-analysis7,8,21. The opposite genetic correlations seen for some traits may be driven by low-effect variants, as we find close to 100% consistency in the direction of effect for the most significantly associated SNPs for both AUDIT-C and AUD. Further, in the MVP sample, the AUD PRS was significantly positively associated with tobacco use and multiple psychiatric disorders, whereas the AUDIT-C PRS was not. Taken together, these findings suggest that AUD and alcohol consumption, measured by AUDIT-C, are related but distinct phenotypes, with AUD being more closely related to other psychiatric disorders, and AUDIT-C to some positive health outcomes.
