from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and found that genes down-regulated upon alcohol exposure were involved in cholesterol homeostasis in the brain (34). These findings could suggest that AUD has both psychiatric and metabolic components, a theme that has also been suggested for other psychiatric disorders, such as anorexia nervosa (35). Additional evidence supporting this provocative hypothesis is the fact that several genes associated with alcohol use and dependence involve brain-endocrine-metabolic mechanisms. KLB is part of a brain-liver feedback loop, acetaldehyde modulates a number of ethanol effects in the brain, and enrichment analyses of alcohol-associated genes found glutamatergic enrichment not only in the brain but also in glucose and carbohydrate processing pathways (21). The ability to process caloric alcoholic beverages may be linked to individual differences in alcohol consumption.
