Alcohol Use Disorder Polygenic Score Compared With Family History and ADH1B.

Importance: Identification of individuals at high risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and subsequent application of prevention and intervention programs has been reported to decrease the incidence of AUD. The polygenic score (PGS), which measures an individual's genetic liability to a disease, can potentially be used to evaluate AUD risk.

Objective: To assess the estimability and generalizability of the PGS, compared with family history and ADH1B, in evaluating the risk of AUD among populations of European ancestry.

High prevalence of alcohol use disorders in 454 young adult offspring from the San Diego prospective study.

Background: Preliminary evaluations of 212 drinking offspring from the San Diego Prospective Study (SDPD) indicated that over 50% developed alcohol use disorder (AUD) by their mid-20s. The present analysis evaluated if those findings remained robust when the group increased to 454 individuals, a sample size that facilitated a search for potential contributors to the high AUD prevalence.

Methods: Semistructured interviews were used to evaluate lifetime AUD diagnoses in 224 daughters and 230 sons from the SDPS (N = 454) by mean age 26.

Latent Trajectories of Persistence of Cannabis Use Across Four Decades in 329 Men From the San Diego Prospective Study.

Objective: These analyses use data from a 40-year prospective study to extend information into the sixth and seventh decades of life regarding latent trajectory classes of cannabis use and predictors of those classes.

Method: Data from the San Diego Prospective Study were analyzed for 329 men of European and Hispanic ethnicity who had used cannabis at about age 23 at study entry (Time 1) and who were interviewed about every 5 years through about age 60 to 70. Latent classes of cannabis use trajectories were evaluated using latent class growth analyses, baseline predictors of class membership were determined, and significant predictors of each class were established using logistic regression analyses.

Sex differences in alcohol's effects on fronto-amygdalar functional connectivity during processing of emotional stimuli.

Background: Amygdala function underlying emotion processing has been shown to vary with an individuals' biological sex. Expanding upon functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings reported previously where a low level of response was the focus, we examined alcohol and sex effects on functional connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions. The central hypothesis predicted that sex would influence alcohol's effects on frontal-limbic functional circuits underlying the processing of negative and positive facial emotions.

Associations between alcohol use disorder polygenic score and remission in participants from high-risk families and the Indiana Biobank.

Background: In the United States, ~50% of individuals who meet criteria for alcohol use disorder (AUD) during their lifetimes do not remit. We previously reported that a polygenic score for AUD (PGS ) was positively associated with AUD severity as measured by DSM-5 lifetime criterion count, and AUD severity was negatively associated with remission. Thus, we hypothesized that PGS would be negatively associated with remission.