- Interaction of gene/gene, gene/environment and environment/environment factors can contribute to alcoholism.
- New research looks at the influence of gene/environment interaction on alcoholism among Mexican Americans.
- Findings show that interaction between education and a polymorphism of the reward gene contribute to severe alcoholism among Mexican Americans.
Hispanics with alcohol-induced problems - especially male Mexican Americans - have significantly worse health and welfare than those with other ethnic backgrounds. This study examined the influence of gene/environment interaction on alcoholism among Mexican Americans. Researchers have found that interaction between education and a polymorphism of the reward gene contribute to severe alcoholism among Mexican Americans.
Results will be published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
"Problem drinking is particularly bad among male Mexican Americans, which is reflected by a three times higher prevalence rate of past heavy drinking in this population than that reported for non-Hispanic male populations," explained Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan, professor at The University of Kansas Medical Center and corresponding author for the study. "Hispanics with alcohol-induced problems, such as alcoholic liver disease (ALD), appear to fare significantly less well than those with other ethnic backgrounds. For example, the survival rate of Hispanic ALD patients after 4.5 years of follow-up is only 28 percent, in contrast to 66 percent for African Americans and 40 percent for Caucasians."
The early belief that alcoholism is largely the result of social and interpersonal influences has greatly benefitted from a more informed understanding that inheritance plays a much stronger role in the development of alcoholism than was previously thought, added Elizabeth C. Penick, professor and director of the division of psychology at The University of Kansas Medical Center.
"However, it is unclear exactly how inheritance works to produce alcoholic drinking," she said. "It is also unclear how inherited influences could operate differently in certain groups to produce higher or lower rates of alcoholism. For example, rates of alcoholic drinking are higher in males than females, higher in young people than older, and higher in certain ethnic groups. Since the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, greater research effort has been focused on specific ways in which inheritance can influence someone to drink alcoholically. Quite naturally, this research has turned to an examination of specific genes or parts of genes and their expression in the human body."