The tendency to become dependent on alcohol has long been known to run in families, which for some only added to the social stigma attached to this complicated condition. But to scientists, that apparent heritability suggested that some genetic component underlying vulnerability to alcohol problems was being transmitted from generation to generation.

With rapid advances over the past 10 years in technologies for discovering and analyzing the functions of genes, researchers are now increasingly able to get at the biological roots of complex disorders such as substance abuse and addiction. The power to examine patterns of inheritance in large populations, and to survey hundreds of thousands of tiny variations in the genomes of each of those individuals, enables investigators to pinpoint specific genes that exert strong or subtle influences on a person's physiology and his or her resulting risk for disease.

This article was originally published with the title Seeking the Connections: Alcoholism and Our Genes.

1 Comments

1. 1. _nice_ 02:41 PM 5/26/08

   According to some scientist that, they found that one particular genetic variant, a version of the dopamine D2 receptor gene, was strongly associated with alcohol consumption.
   This gene appears to influence the 'high' that people derive from drugs such as alcohol. People without this variant might derive less pleasure from alcohol, and may therefore drink less.
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   _nice_
   
   Suffering from an addiction. This website has a lot of great resources and treatment centers. http://www.treatmentcenters.org

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