Chunk #13 — 3. Pharmacogenetic Studies of Treatment for Alcohol Use Disorder in Individuals of Diverse Ancestries — 3.1 Individuals of European Ancestry
European Americans (73.6%), African Americans accounted for the other 24.4%, which may have also skewed the results. Similarly, the study by Arias et al. recruited veterans who, in addition to being AD, had also been diagnosed with a mood, anxiety, or psychotic disorder.34 This again could account for the discrepancy between these results and the aforementioned studies that found an association between the OPRM1 Asn40Asp polymorphism and response to NTX in primarily European-American samples. While most previous studies have examined the interaction of NTX and the Asp40 allele in retrospective analyses of clinical trial data, a recent prospective study of a 12-week clinical trial in which Asp40 allele carriers were oversampled, did not find any significant NTX-by-gene interactions.30 This is important as the study included a large sample size of AD individuals and oversampled Asp40 carriers, yet failed to find a significant interaction. Findings showed a very small and nonsignificant effect of the Asp40 allele and in the opposite direction than predicted, namely that NTX would reduce heavy drinking in this group.30 In addition to NTX, other medications have been examined to understand their influence on treatment response in Asp40 carriers. For example, a pharmacogenetic study examining the effect of
