Alcohol use problems, including pathological alcohol use disorders (AUDs), are a leading contributor to the global burden of disease, responsible for substantially increasing risk for premature death, disability, and preventable illness (World Health Organization, 2009). Extensive work in genetic epidemiology using twin and adoption studies has shown that AUDs are heritable, with genetic factors accounting for about half of the inter-individual variation in risk (Verhulst et al., 2015). However, the transition from statistical studies of latent genetic risk to molecular genetic studies identifying the actual genes involved in the etiology of alcohol problems has had limited success.
