NEW YORK – Researchers have identified through a genome-wide association study half a dozen loci associated with alcohol consumption.
Excessive alcohol consumption is the result of a combination of genetic factors as well as non-genetic factors like gender and poverty. Previous twin and other studies have found that genetic factors account for about half the variance in alcohol use disorder. While risk alleles at ADH and ALDH have been well replicated, other implicated loci like SNPs near KLB, SLC39A8, and CADM2 have not been well replicated.