Chunk #2 — 1. Introduction

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Associations of glutamate decarboxylase genes with initial sensitivity and age-at-onset of alcohol dependence in the Irish Affected Sib Pair Study of Alcohol Dependence.

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is high demand for GABA (Soghomonian and Martin, 1998). Rodent studies suggest that GAD1 is important in maintaining GABA levels in the brain, and that the GAD1 knockout is usually lethal. In contrast, GAD2 knockout mice maintain normal brain GABA levels, but are susceptible to seizure, show increased anxiety behavior, and have decreased response to sedative drugs such as benzodiazepines and pentobarbital (Asada et al., 1996; Kash et al., 1999).