Journal
NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
Volume 27, Issue 6, Pages 517-526Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2003.08.003
Keywords
addiction; drug abuse; vulnerability; susceptibility; etiology; complex traits; item response theory; scale; phenotype
Categories
Funding
- NIAAA NIH HHS [K02AA00291, 5R01AA011637] Funding Source: Medline
- NIDA NIH HHS [R01DA011922, P50DA005605] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Liabilities to complex disorders, discussed in the accompanying paper, present difficulties in measurement related to the arbitrariness of diagnostic threshold definitions and problems with discrimination between trait values, especially within the 'normal' individuals. The inability to quantitatively estimate the risk for a disorder, such as substance use disorders (SUD), is an obstacle for studying etiological (e.g. genetic) mechanisms and developing efficient prevention and treatment measures. Based on the concept of common liability to SUD, this paper delineates an application of the longitudinal family/high-risk design and item response theory to the development of a continuous index of liability. The method has been tested in both simulation study and empirical data. The approach described affords the opportunity to quantitatively estimate the risk for SUD at an early age and before any drug exposure. This method is also applicable to measuring liabilities to other complex disorders, especially those with relatively late onset. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available