It is a methodological advantage of our study that both genders were followed until they were about 45 years of age, and that our analyses took into account parental social status during upbringing. Controlling for parental social status slightly attenuated the risk estimates associated with parental AUD, and the results of the adjusted analyses indicate that both parental registration with AUD and parental social status are significant and independent predictors of AUD in offspring. Our results should be interpreted in the light of results from a recent Danish cohort study that identified deprived social circumstances during childhood as independent markers of substance abuse in adult life (Osler et al., 2006).
