Confirmation of prior evidence of genetic susceptibility to alcoholism in a genome-wide association study of comorbid alcoholism and bipolar disorder

Abstract

We have confirmed the role of some genes previously shown to be associated with alcoholism in the comorbid bipolar alcoholism subgroup. In this subgroup, bipolar disorder may lower the threshold for the phenotypic expression of these alcoholism susceptibility genes. We also show that some genes may independently increase susceptibility to affective disorder and alcoholism.