The findings from the present study should be interpreted in the context of several limitations. First, we were unable to formally test whether the moderating effects of peer deviance, parental monitoring, or potentially stressful life events on adolescent alcohol use differed by sex. The basic GxE models described in this paper require relatively large sample sizes to detect effects. Therefore, with the increased complexity of testing sex differences in moderation models we would not have had sufficient power. Further studies are needed to assess the potential important differences in how these moderators affect male and female alcohol use during adolescence. Secondly, family and twin data-based models are not informative as to which genes are responsible for the interactions discovered in twin models. Accordingly, studies of latent GxE can tell us about environmental factors that moderate overall genetic influence, but not specific genes or facets of a predisposition that may interact with environmental factors.
