Author: Alex Thompson

Is Addiction Hereditary? The Genetics of Drug and Alcohol Addiction

Unlike GWAS of cigarette smoking and alcohol phenotypes, GWAS of these specific drugs have had limited success at identifying and replicating variant associations. Similar to findings for alcohol, recent GWAS of CanUD have found divergence between cannabis use and CanUD, both at the level of individual risk loci as well as genetic relationships with other traits and disorders. Despite a significant correlation of 0.50 between CanUD and lifetime cannabis use, 12 of 22 traits tested had significantly different genetic correlations with CanUD v. cannabis use (Johnson et al., 2020b).

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Still, it appears some genes can contribute to the risk of developing a substance use disorder (SUD). Finally, there are multiple substance classes not covered in this review, including hallucinogens, ‘club drugs’, and inhalants. These substance classes have been included in a handful of twin and family studies examining drug use, but no well-powered GWAS exist. Future GWAS efforts will be informative for how the genetics of these additional SUDs overlap with or diverge from well-studied SUDs. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been studied for years, starting with twin studies comparing identical or fraternal twins and their risk for AUD and adoption studies comparing adopted children to their birth parents. Some genes increase a person’s risk for AUD, while others decrease that risk directly or indirectly.

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  1. In 2021, more than 46 million people in the United States aged 12 or older had at least one substance use disorder , and only 6.3% had received treatment.
  2. While there are challenges inherent in studying complex, polygenic traits such as SUDs, it is hoped that better understanding the genetic basis of risk for developing SUDs will eventually help inform SUD prevention and treatment.
  3. This suggests that, while necessary for the development of CanUD, cannabis initiation is at least partly genetically distinct from CanUD.
  4. New methods are being developed that will allow researchers to analyze data concurrently, as applied in plant 138 and mouse model 139 studies.

Comparisons of these and other methods will be needed to establish standard analytic practices. Of the 8 loci, TF is the only one implicated for biomarkers but not extended to alcohol use disorder or related alcohol phenotypes. There has been limited knowledge of the molecular genetic underpinnings of addiction until now. Further, most clinical trials and behavioral studies have focused on individual substances, rather than addiction more broadly. Whether you are genetically predisposed to addiction or not, if you or a loved one are struggling with substance abuse, help is available. To address these ethical concerns, policies and guidelines must be developed to ensure the responsible and ethical use of genetic information in the context of addiction.

New research offers insights on numerous addiction-related genes.

Mark S. Gold, M.D., is a pioneering researcher, professor, and chairman of psychiatry at Yale, the University of Florida, and Washington University in St Louis. His theories have changed the field, stimulated additional research, and led to new understanding and treatments for opioid use disorders, cocaine use disorders, overeating, smoking, and depression. The world around you also can play a significant role in opening a door that leads to problematic substance use, notes Dr. Anand. New methods are being developed that will allow researchers to analyze data concurrently, as applied in plant 138 and mouse model 139 studies.

Research favored a unidimensional diagnosis over the separation of abuse and dependence (Hasin et al., 2013). With the revised DSM-5 SUD criteria, the substance abuse ‘legal problems’ criterion was removed and a craving criterion was added. Compton, Dawson, Goldstein, and Grant (2013) found that a threshold of ⩾4 DSM-5 criteria (i.e. moderate severity) demonstrated optimal correspondence with DSM-IV dependence for alcohol, cocaine, and opioid use disorders. About half of your susceptibility to developing a substance use disorder (SUD) can be hereditary.

Over 40 research groups conduct basic neuroscience research and clinical investigations of mental illnesses, brain function, and behavior at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. Published today in Nature Mental Health, the study was led by researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis, along with more than 150 coauthors from around the world. It was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute on Aging. But does that mean your chance of addiction is essentially a coin flip if you have a family history of SUD?

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CPD, pack-years (i.e. quantity of cigarette packs smoked in lifetime), smoking initiation, age of smoking initiation; Brazel et al., 2019]. Rare variation accounted for 1.0–2.2% of phenotypic variance across these traits (Brazel et al., 2019). Heritable factors contribute across the stages of cigarette smoking and NicUD, with a range of heritability estimates for nicotine dependence (ND) between ~0.30 and 0.70 (Agrawal et al., 2012; Sullivan & Kendler, 1999). Variability in reported h2 results for NicUD could, at least in part, be due to the different ways in which NicUD-related problems have been assessed