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posted by chromas on Thursday April 04 2019, @05:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the free-me dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Study reveals genes associated with heavy drinking and alcoholism: Unique genetic variants may inform future treatments for each alcohol disorder

The findings, published this week in Nature Communications, suggest that, although heavy drinking is a prerequisite for AUD, variants in several genes -- DRD2 and SIX3, for example -- may need to be present for people to develop AUD.

"This study has revealed an important genetic independence of these two traits that we haven't seen as clearly before," said Henry R. Kranzler, MD, a professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and first author of the study. "Focusing on variants only linked to AUD may help identify people at risk and find targets for the development of medications to treat it. The same applies to alcohol consumption, as those variants could inform interventions to help reduce consumption in heavy drinkers, who face their own set of adverse effects."

[...] Environmental, hereditary, and genetic factors all play a role in AUD; however, many of the variants across the genome believed to be associated with the disorder remain to be identified.

For the study, the researchers used genetic data from the multi-ethnic Million Veteran Program (MVP), a national, voluntary research program sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes white, African-American, Latino, and Asian participants. The diverse study sample is notable, in that it included more than 50,000 African-Americans, one of the largest genome-wide studies of this population. Scores from the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C) screenings and AUD diagnoses were obtained from the same population (a total of 274,424 people) to conduct the GWAS for the two traits. The researchers also analyzed other data from health records to look for correlations between genes and diseases, as well as other non-alcohol related traits.


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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday April 04 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Thursday April 04 2019, @06:20PM (#824625) Journal

    I'm here to point out the irony of your complaining about the summary / article not providing proper introduction of their abbreviations and you doing it twice in your post.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:07PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:07PM (#824672) Journal

    But that's the point -- I don't care anymore. I'm not going to read substantive comments. I'm not going to read TFA. I realize this is irrational and I don't care. It does however, serve as a reminder to me for things I care about, to focus on clarity.