Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION
Volume 95, Issue 3, Pages 539-547Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.111.015545
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- NIH Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (GEI) [U01 HG004422]
- Gene, Environment Association Studies (GENEVA) under GEI
- Johns Hopkins University Center for Inherited Disease Research by NIH GEI [U01HG004438]
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
- National Institute on Drug Abuse
- NIH [HHSN268200782096C]
- ABMRF/Foundation for Alcohol Research
- Boston Obesity Nutrition Research Center [DK46200, U01HG004399, NIH R01 HL71981, K99HL098459]
- American Heart Association Scientist Development Award
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MCC)
- National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) as part of the trans-NIH GEI [U01-DE018903]
- NIDCR [R01-DE 014899, R01-DE09551, R01-DE12101]
- Iowa Fluoride Study
- Iowa Bone Development Study
- NIDCR through CIDR's NIH
- NHLBI
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [HHSN268201100005C, HHSN268201100006C, HHSN268201100007C, HHSN268201100008C, HHSN268201100009C, HHSN268201100010C, HHSN268201100011C, HHSN268201100012C]
- Office of Research and Development
- Medical Research Service and the Baltimore Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
- NIH Office of Research on Women's Health [R01 NS45012, U01 NS069208-01]
- National Human Genome Research Institute [U01 HG004436]
- NHGRI [U01HG004728, NEI R01EY015473]
- NIH GEI [U01HG04424]
- [K02DA21237]
- [DA23668]
- [T32 AG000262]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Whereas moderate drinking may have health benefits, excessive alcohol consumption causes many important acute and chronic diseases and is the third leading contributor to preventable death in the United States. Twin studies suggest that alcohol-consumption patterns are heritable (50%); however, multiple genetic variants of modest effect size are likely to contribute to this heritable variation. Genome-wide association studies provide a tool for discovering genetic loci that contribute to variations in alcohol consumption. Opportunities exist to identify susceptibility loci with modest effect by meta-analyzing together multiple studies. However, existing studies assessed many different aspects of alcohol use, such as typical compared with heavy drinking, and these different assessments can be difficult to reconcile. In addition, many studies lack the ability to distinguish between lifetime and recent abstention or to assess the pattern of drinking during the week, and a variety of such concerns surround the appropriateness of developing a common summary measure of alcohol intake. Combining such measures of alcohol intake can cause heterogeneity and exposure misclassification, cause a reduction in power, and affect the magnitude of genetic association signals. In this review, we discuss the challenges associated with harmonizing alcohol-consumption data from studies with widely different assessment instruments, with a particular focus on large-scale genetic studies. Am J Clin Nutr 2012; 95: 539-47.
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