What is it about?
Alcohol use behaviors are heritable, but the diverse patterns of how, when, and why people drink are often not accounted for when trying to identify the genes underlying this heritability. Here, we examined how individual differences in DNA were associated with 18 different alcohol use behaviors, including frequency and quantity of drinking, beverage preferences, and alcohol-related health problems. We found that these genetic influences clustered in four distinct factors that implicated different genes and biological processes.
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Why is it important?
Studies such as this demonstrate the importance of genetic heterogeneity in alcohol use behaviors: different genetically-influenced processes leading to the same outcome or diagnosis. These findings indicate that one-size-fits-all strategies for both gene identification efforts and potential treatment applications are too limited. It is critical that we consider individual differences in behaviors to be able to provide individually-relevant information and interventions in the future.
Perspectives
There is currently a push to bring "big data" into psychiatric genetics and collect ever larger and larger sample sizes of cases versus controls of a certain disorder for gene identification efforts. I hope this work will encourage others not to forget about each individual that forms a part of the big data wave, and to keep in mind the importance of individual differences in behaviors, symptoms, and longitudinal trajectories that underlie such genetic comparison studies.
Jeanne Savage
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Genetic Heterogeneity Across Dimensions of Alcohol Use Behaviors, American Journal of Psychiatry, October 2024, American Psychiatric Association,
DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.20231055.
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