Of the many factors contributing to the development of AUD, genetics confers substantial vulnerability, with an estimated heritability of ~50% (Heath et al., 1997, Prescott and Kendler, 1999, Verhulst et al., 2015). To date, however, the contribution of genetics to remission from AUD is understudied. Genetic influences on the development of AUD had a negative association with remission in females but not males in a population-based sample of young adult twins (McCutcheon et al., 2012). A machine-learning model detected a negative association between a polygenic score (PGS) for problematic alcohol consumption and remission from AUD in African Ancestry (AA) males but not in AA females or in European Ancestry (EA) males or females (Kinreich et al., 2021). These scant, mixed results indicate the need for additional studies that examine genetic influences on remission to clarify whether and for whom genetic factors might influence the probability of remission.
