Abstract
BackgroundThere is substantial evidence for a significant genetic component to the risk for alcoholism. However, susceptibility loci or genes for alcohol dependence remain largely unknown. To identify susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence, we selected 329 extended families from the Framingham Heart Study population in which at least one family member reported alcohol consumption during the interview in 1970–1971, and performed genome-wide linkage analyses using various analytical methods.ResultsMulti-point sib-pair regression analysis using the SIBPAL program of S.A.G.E. provided strong evidence for linkage of alcohol dependence to chromosomes 9 (p-value < 0.0001) and weak evidence to chromosomes 15 and 16 (p-value < 0.005). To confirm these findings, we re-analyzed the same data set by various methods implemented in GENEHUNTER and found that only one region was significant with a LOD score > 2.0 by the variance-component method. This region is located on chromosome 9 between markers GATA21F05 and GATA81C04.ConclusionAnalyses of the Framingham Heart Study population provided evidence of genetic susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence on chromosomes 9, 15, and 16. The genomic region identified on chromosome 9 was particularly interesting because the region has also been previously reported to be linked to alcohol dependence in the American Indian population by another group.
Highlights
There is substantial evidence for a significant genetic component to the risk for alcoholism
BMC Genetics 2003, 4 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/4/s1/S104 population. To further confirm these earlier reports and identify any additional susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence, in this study we performed a genome-wide scan in the Framingham Heart Study population using the number of grams of alcohol consumed per day as an alcoholism phenotype
To minimize the impact of such inflation on linkage analysis results, and to reduce the skewness due to individuals who reported extremely high alcohol consumption per day, we transformed the number of grams of alcohol consumed per day into natural logs prior to linkage analysis
Summary
There is substantial evidence for a significant genetic component to the risk for alcoholism. Susceptibility loci or genes for alcohol dependence remain largely unknown. To identify susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence, we selected 329 extended families from the Framingham Heart Study population in which at least one family member reported alcohol consumption during the interview in 1970–1971, and performed genome-wide linkage analyses using various analytical methods. To identify susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence and related phenotypes, several studies have been conducted and reported in the literature (e.g., [4,5,6,7]). To further confirm these earlier reports and identify any additional susceptibility loci for alcohol dependence, in this study we performed a genome-wide scan in the Framingham Heart Study population using the number of grams of alcohol consumed per day as an alcoholism phenotype
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