Most stages of alcohol involvement include a heritable contribution (twin h2 = 40–70%), although the magnitude of these genetic effects varies considerably across development (Edwards et al., 2017; Enoch, 2006; Pagan et al., 2006). Common genetic variants from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) explain 4–13% of the phenotypic variance in alcohol use and misuse (Clarke et al., 2017; Kranzler et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2019; Sanchez-Roige et al., 2017; Schumann et al., 2016; Walters et al., 2018). The largest GWAS of alcohol dependence to date (Kranzler et al., 2019) suggests that the genetic correlation between alcohol consumption (units per week) and ICD coded AUD is variable (rg ranging from 0.54 (beer/cider) to 0.004 (champagne/white wine)).
