There appears to be a familial influence on abstinent remission among 1st‐degree relatives in COGA. Individuals with AUD who are related to a proband who becomes abstinent are more than 3 times as likely to be abstinent themselves compared with individuals related to a proband with persistent AUD. 115 This suggests that remission might cluster in families, but does not clarify the mechanisms—genetic, environment, or a combination—by which familial influences are transmitted. These findings stand in contrast to a lack of evidence for an association between family history of AUD and probability of remission in a variety of studies. 116 , 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 The innovation made possible by the high‐risk family‐based COGA sample is the ability to examine how remission in one family member relates to remission in others, rather than testing AUD‐remission associations.
