Is Addiction to Alcohol an Inborn Character

Penn State researchers co-led a large genetic study that identified more than 2,300 genes predicting alcohol and tobacco use after analyzing data from more than 3.4 million people. They said a majority of these genes were similar among people with European, African, American, and Asian ancestries.

Global Burden of Alcohol and Tobacco Use

Alcohol and tobacco use are associated with approximately 15% and 5% of deaths worldwide, respectively, and are linked with chronic conditions like cancer and heart disease. Although the environment and culture can affect a person’s use and the likelihood of becoming addicted to these substances, genetics is also a contributing factor, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

They helped identify around 400 genes that are associated with certain alcohol and tobacco use behaviors in people in a prior research study. They now identified more than 1,900 additional genes that are associated with alcohol and tobacco use behaviors. A fifth of the samples used in this analysis were of non-European ancestries, which increases the relevance of these findings to a diverse population.

Collaborating with peers from the University of Minnesota and more than 100 other institutions, Liu and the team evaluated genetic datasets from more than 3.4 million people, at least 20% of whom were of non-European ancestry.

They included genetic datasets from people of African, East Asian, and American ancestry and evaluated a variety of smoking and alcohol traits ranging from the initiation of drinking or smoking to the onset of regular use and the amount consumed. Using machine learning techniques, the researchers identified genes that were associated with these behaviors.

Genetic Risk Score can Predict Alcohol and Tobacco Use

Comparing the data between samples from different ancestries, Liu and colleagues found that there was a striking similarity in the genes related to alcohol and tobacco use behaviors between the different ancestries, with 80% of the variants showing consistent effects across the studied populations.

While some genetic variants had different effects across ancestries or ancestry-specific effects, the genes associated with alcohol and tobacco use were largely consistent between samples from various ancestries.

Despite the similarity of genetic effects, the model developed using data from individuals of European ancestry could only accurately predict alcohol and tobacco use behaviors for people of European ancestry. The results were published in Nature.

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Using these findings to develop screening tools for diseases of despair is the kind of innovation that will help our college lead the way in using health informatics to contribute to health preservation and disease treatment in our communities.

A majority of the genes the team identified have unknown functions, so the researchers will try to understand their functions and how changes in those genes, their function, and their interaction with the environment affect the risk for addictive behaviors.

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Source-Eurekalert