Among studies that included craving, latent variable modeling showed that craving fit well on a unidimensional latent variable with other DSM-IV alcohol criteria in the U.S. (Keyes et al., 2010) and Australian (Mewton et al., 2011) general population and also in emergency room patients in several countries (Cherpitel et al., 2010), but was redundant with other SUD criteria, thus not adding much information. In addition, in the U.S. general population, adding craving increased DSM-5 SUD prevalence by <.05% (Agrawal et al., 2011) thus not casting a wider diagnostic net.
