Researchers Identify 19 New Genetic Variants for Problematic Drinking

An international team of scientists has identified 29 independent genetic risk variants — 19 of them novel — linked to problematic alcohol use and revealed genetic relationships with numerous other traits.

“The new data triple the number of known genetic risk loci associated with problematic alcohol use,” said Professor Joel Gelernter, a researcher in the Yale University School of Medicine and corresponding author of a paper published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Professor Gelernter and colleagues conducted a genome-wide analysis of problematic alcohol use, combining alcohol use disorder and problematic drinking, in 435,563 European-ancestry individuals.

The scientists found 19 previously unknown independent genetic risk factors for problematic alcohol use, and confirmed 10 previously identified risk factors.

The analysis of biobank data included information on genetic risk factors for several psychiatric disorders.

This information allowed the authors to study shared genetic associations between problematic drinking and disorders such as depression and anxiety.

They also found genetic heritability of these variants was enriched in the brain and in evolutionarily conserved regulatory regions of the genome, attesting to their importance in biological function.

Using a technique called Mendelian randomization, they were able to investigate how one genetically influenced trait affects another genetically linked trait.

“This gives us ways to understand causal relations between problematic alcohol use traits such as psychiatric states, risk-taking behavior, and cognitive performance,” said Dr. Hang Zhou, a researcher in the Yale University School of Medicine and first author of the study.

“With these results, we are also in a better position to evaluate individual-level risk for problematic alcohol use,” Professor Gelernter said.