SynthesisPsychological medicine2015
The heritability of alcohol use disorders: a meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies.
Synthesis in Psychological medicine, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 382 papers, 8 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
382 citing papers in PubMed, 8 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic review with meta-analysis on the relation between acute stress, alcohol consumption and cortisol levels in individuals with a personal, familial or no alcohol use disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Sweet-liking and sugar supplementation as innovative components in substance use disorder treatment: A systematic review.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Gene expression differences associated with alcohol use disorder in human brain.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Association of Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor Polymorphisms With Alcohol Use Disorder: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Genetic Association Studies.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Multi-ancestry study of the genetics of problematic alcohol use in over 1 million individuals.Nature medicine · 2023Pooled it
- The Impact of Taste Preference-Related Gene Polymorphisms on Alcohol Consumption Behavior: A Systematic Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Genome-wide meta-analysis of alcohol use disorder in East Asians.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- Evaluating risk for alcohol use disorder: Polygenic risk scores and family history.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2022Pooled it
- Polygenic risk for alcohol consumption and multisite chronic pain: Associations with ad lib drinking behavior.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Exploring the Pleiotropic Genetic Architecture of Substance Use Disorders: Findings From Phenome-Wide Association Studies.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Review
- Lifetime substance use disorder and suicidal behaviour: a population-based familial co-aggregation register study.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- A prospective co-twin control analysis of internalizing and externalizing pathways for alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis use problems from adolescence through adulthood.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Elucidating psychosocial outcome profiles as a function of aggregate genetic risk for suicide attempt and alcohol use disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Preconception Chronic Intermittent Ethanol Exposure Impacts Offspring Transcriptomes with Sex and Tissue Specific Effects.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Patterns, Predictors, and Correlates of Problematic Alcohol Use and Remission From Adolescence to Early Midlife.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Exploratory Analysis of Genetic Variants in BDNF, GABA Receptors, and Dopaminergic Pathways with Alcohol Use Disorder in a Spanish Cohort.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Regulation of Chromatin Acetylation by Alcohol: Dependence on Sex, Brain Region, and Mode of Exposure.Genes · 2026Review
- Multi-Ancestry Survival GWAS of Substance Use Initiation in the ABCD Study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Parallel Contributions of Externalizing Polygenic Liability and Brain Imaging Phenotypes to Adolescent Substance Use Initiation Timing: A Multistage Analysis in the ABCD Study.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Cross-generational transcriptomic effects of alcohol use disorder in third generation offspring.Scientific reports · 2026Article
322 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundTo clarify the role of genetic and environmental risk factors in alcohol use disorders (AUDs), we performed a meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies and explored the impact of sex, assessment method (interview v. hospital/population records), and study design (twin v. adoption study) on heritability estimates.
methodThe literature was searched for all unique twin and adoption studies of AUD and identified 12 twin and five adoption studies. The data were then reconstructed and analyzed using ordinal data full information maximum likelihood in the OpenMx program. Heterogeneity was tested with likelihood ratio tests by equating the parameters across studies.
resultsThere was no evidence for heterogeneity by study design, sex or assessment method. The best-fit estimate of the heritability of AUD was 0.49 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.43-0.53], and the proportion of shared environmental variance was 0.10 (95% CI 0.03-0.16). Estimates of unique environmental proportions of variance differed significantly across studies.
conclusionsAUD is approximately 50% heritable. The multiple genetically informative studies of this syndrome have produced consistent results that support the validity of this heritability estimate, especially given the different potential methodological weaknesses of twin and adoption designs, and of assessments of AUD based on personal interviews v. official records. We also found evidence for modest shared environmental effects suggesting that environmental factors also contribute to the familial aggregation of AUDs.
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