Given previous promising but limited evidence that genetic vulnerability, gender and early life stress operate synergistically to produce alcohol dependence (Enoch, 2011), we investigated the relationship between the five maltreatments and parental history of alcohol problems and gender, finding three key synergistic relationships. First, the joint effect of parental history and physical abuse was significantly greater than the sum of the independent effects of these two risk factors, suggesting that parental history and physical abuse may operate synergistically to produce alcohol dependence in the general population. Second, we found a significant synergistic relationship between parental history and sexual abuse which appears to depend on female gender. Third, results revealed a significant synergistic relationship between parental history and emotional neglect in women, but not in men. Thus, there may be different underlying alcohol dependence mechanisms in the general population that function in the presence of parental history and female gender but differ by whether childhood sexual abuse or emotional neglect was experienced. Results support and enhance our understanding of the hypothesis that the effect of parental history on complex disorders may
