A prospective evaluation of how a low level of response to alcohol predicts later heavy drinking and alcohol problems.

Background And Objectives: Evaluations of how a genetically influenced characteristic, such as the low level of response (a low LR) to alcohol, relates to later heavy drinking and alcohol problems usually include environmental contributors. The best way to understand how LR works in the context of these additional characteristics is to study the process prospectively, but such analyses tend to be complex and the papers are sometimes cluttered with jargon. This report attempts to offer a more straightforward description of the results from such a prospective model of how a lower LR at age 20 relates to alcohol outcomes at age 40.

The overlap in predicting alcohol outcome for two measures of the level of response to alcohol.

Background: Two different measures have been used to establish a person's level of response (LR) to alcohol as a risk factor for alcohol use disorders. LR values established by the alcohol challenge protocol and the Self-Report of the Effects of Ethanol (SRE) questionnaire usually correlate at 0.3 to 0.

Clinical implications of tolerance to alcohol in nondependent young drinkers.

Background: Ten percent of teenagers and young adults with no alcohol diagnosis and a third of those with alcohol abuse report tolerance to alcohol. However, relatively few data are available on the clinical implications of tolerance in nondependent men and women.

Methods: Data were gathered from 649 18-to-22-year-old drinking offspring from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) families.