The heritability of alcoholism symptoms: "indicators of genetic and environmental influence in alcohol-dependent individuals" revisited.
- Authors
- Slutske, W S; True, W R; Scherrer, J F; Heath, A C; Bucholz, K K; Eisen, S A; Goldberg, J; Lyons, M J; Tsuang, M T
- Year
- 1999
- Journal
- Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research
- PMID
- 10371393
- DOI
- 10.1111/j.1530-0277.1999.tb04181.x
There is consistent evidence from twin and adoption studies implicating genetic factors in the etiology of alcoholism, yet few studies have examined the role of genetic influences on individual symptoms of alcoholism. In a previous study of 113 male twins, Johnson et al. (1996a) identified 7 alcoholism symptoms that were more "genetic" and 14 that were more "environmental" (that is, non-genetic) in their etiology by examining symptom concordances among monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs. The present study represents an attempt to replicate the results of this previous study and extend them by estimating the contribution of genetic factors to the variation in liability for different alcoholism symptoms. Subjects were 3356 male twin pairs from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. Lifetime histories of alcoholism symptoms were assessed by a structured psychiatric telephone interview. The results of the previous study were not replicated. The correlations between symptom classifications as genetic and non-genetic in the present and previous study were nonsignificant and ranged from -0.27 to 0.11. However, within the present study the correlation between symptom classifications as genetic and non-genetic was statistically significant across random split-half subsamples (r = 0.59); nine alcoholism symptoms were consistently classified as genetic and six symptoms as non-genetic in their etiology. Model-fitting analyses applied to different alcoholism symptoms yielded heritability estimates ranging from 0.03 to 0.53 with broad and overlapping confidence intervals around these estimates, ranging from 0.00 to 0.65. The results of this study highlight the difficulty of identifying more or less heritable phenotypes in twin research, and suggest that it may not be possible to identify specific alcoholism symptoms that are more genetic in their etiology than others. Nevertheless, there appears to be potentially important variation in the relative magnitude of genetic influences for individual alcoholism symptoms, and exploring these differences may lead to further insights into the nosology and etiology of alcohol-related problems.
No figures extracted from this document.
No chunks — full text not yet ingested.
No entities extracted from this document yet.
No uploaded files.
No citations found.
In this knowledge base
External
| Title | Authors | Journal | Year | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genetic risk for alcohol use disorder in relation to individual symptom criteria: Do polygenic indices provide unique information for understanding severity and heterogeneity? | Sarles YM et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| The interaction between candidate SNPs and social factors significantly influences the prevalence of alcohol use disorder in Chinese young male adults. | Ju N et al. | — | 2025 | → |
| Genetically selected alcohol-preferring msP rats to study alcohol use disorder: Anything lost in translation? | Borruto AM et al. | — | 2021 | → |
| Acute alcohol withdrawal and recovery in men lead to profound changes in DNA methylation profiles: a longitudinal clinical study. | Witt SH et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| High-Intensity Drinking in Adult Australian Twins. | Dash GF et al. | — | 2020 | → |
| Genetic Epidemiology of Liability for Alcohol-Induced Blacking and Passing Out. | Davis CN et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Genome-wide association studies of alcohol dependence, DSM-IV criterion count and individual criteria. | Lai D et al. | — | 2019 | → |
| Risk Locus Identification Ties Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms to SORCS2. | Smith AH et al. | — | 2018 | → |
| Epigenetic basis of the dark side of alcohol addiction. | Pandey SC et al. | — | 2017 | → |
| Alcohol-Induced Blackouts: A Review of Recent Clinical Research with Practical Implications and Recommendations for Future Studies. | Wetherill RR et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Overview of the Genetics of Alcohol Use Disorder. | Tawa EA et al. | — | 2016 | → |
| Shared additive genetic influences on DSM-IV criteria for alcohol dependence in subjects of European ancestry. | Palmer RH et al. | — | 2015 | → |
| Family-based association analysis of alcohol dependence criteria and severity. | Wetherill L et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Gamma-aminobutyric acid system genes--no evidence for a role in alcohol use and abuse in a community-based sample. | Irons DE et al. | — | 2014 | → |
| Behind the wheel and on the map: Genetic and environmental associations between drunk driving and other externalizing behaviors. | Quinn PD et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Evidence for a genetic component for substance dependence in Native Americans. | Ehlers CL et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Influence of alcohol use on neural response to Go/No-Go task in college drinkers. | Ahmadi A et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Reduced limbic metabolism and fronto-cortical volume in rats vulnerable to alcohol addiction. | Gozzi A et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| The genetics of alcohol dependence. | Rietschel M et al. | — | 2013 | → |
| Genetic etiology of the common liability to drug dependence: evidence of common and specific mechanisms for DSM-IV dependence symptoms. | Palmer RH et al. | — | 2012 | → |
| Individuals family history positive for alcoholism show functional magnetic resonance imaging differences in reward sensitivity that are related to impulsivity factors. | Andrews MM et al. | — | 2011 | → |
| The association of exon 3 VNTR polymorphism of the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene with alcoholism in Mexican Americans. | Du Y et al. | — | 2010 | → |
| Alcohol consumption indices of genetic risk for alcohol dependence. | Grant JD et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Developing a quantitative measure of alcohol consumption for genomic studies on prospective cohorts. | Agrawal A et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Relation of caregiver alcohol use to unintentional childhood injury. | Damashek A et al. | — | 2009 | → |
| Association between single nucleotide polymorphisms in the mu opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) and self-reported responses to alcohol in American Indians. | Ehlers CL et al. | — | 2008 | → |
| Sex differences in the heritability of alcohol problems. | Hardie TL et al. | — | 2008 | → |
| Is there heterogeneity among syndromes of substance use disorder for illicit drugs? | Beseler C et al. | — | 2006 | → |
| New findings on the genetic influences on alcohol use and dependence. | Higuchi S et al. | — | 2006 | → |
| Conceptual framework for the etiology of alcoholism: a "kindling"/stress hypothesis. | Breese GR et al. | — | 2005 | → |
| Genetic and environmental influences on conduct disorder: symptom, domain and full-scale analyses. | Gelhorn HL et al. | — | 2005 | → |
| Familial transmission of alcoholism among nonalcoholics and mild, severe, and dyssocial subtypes of alcoholism. | Johnson EO et al. | — | 2001 | → |
| A genome screen of maximum number of drinks as an alcoholism phenotype. | Saccone NL et al. | — | 2000 | → |
| Genetic and environmental influences on posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol and drug dependence in twin pairs. | Xian H et al. | — | 2000 | → |
| Scanning of five chromosomes for alcohol consumption loci. | Vadasz C et al. | — | 2000 | → |
| Self-Reported zygosity and the equal-environments assumption for psychiatric disorders in the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. | Xian H et al. | — | 2000 | → |
| Phenotyping alcoholism. | McGue M | — | 1999 | → |