Polygenic and environmental influences on the course of African Americans’ alcohol use from early adolescence through young adulthood

Abstract

The study examined (a) whether alcohol use subgroups could be identified among African Americans assessed from adolescence through early adulthood, and (b) whether subgroup membership was associated with the interaction between internalizing symptoms and antisocial behavior polygenic risk scores (PRSs) and environmental characteristics (i.e., parental monitoring, community disadvantage). Participants (N = 436) were initially recruited for an elementary school-based prevention trial in a Mid-Atlantic city. Youths reported on the frequency of their past year alcohol use from ages 14–26. DNA was obtained from participants at age 21. Internalizing symptoms and antisocial behavior PRSs were created based on a genome-wide association study (GWAS) conducted by Benke et al. (2014) and Tielbeek et al. (2017), respectively. Parental monitoring and community disadvantage were assessed at age 12. Four classes of past year alcohol use were identified: (a) early-onset, increasing; (b) late-onset, moderate use; (c) low steady; and (d) early-onset, decreasing. In high community disadvantaged settings, participants with a higher internalizing symptoms PRS were more likely to be in the early-onset, decreasing class than the low steady class. When exposed to elevated community disadvantage, participants with a higher antisocial behavior PRS were more likely to be in the early-onset, increasing class than the early-onset, decreasing and late-onset, moderate use classes.

Gene–environment interplay in adolescence and early adulthood.

“…This polygenic score can then be used to predict specific outcomes (see Dudbridge, 2013, for more details about polygenic scores). Although polygenic scores were first used in studies predicting severe psychiatric disease (International Schizophrenia Consortium, 2009), they have more recently been used to predict more normative outcomes, such as educational attainment (Lee et al, 2018) and alcohol use (Rabinowitz et al, 2020). Studies using polygenic scores do not require specialized samples of individuals such as those used in family-based genetic designs.…”

“…Like most other behaviors examined, substance use shows significant genetic influence (e.g., Derringer et al, 2008;Neiderhiser et al, 2013), as does behavioral risk for substance use (e.g., Hicks et al, 2011;Rabinowitz et al, 2020) and substance use progression (e.g., Deutsch & Selya, 2020;Kandaswamy et al, 2021;Vitaro et al, 2018; see also Chapter 33, this volume, for an overview of substance use). There is some variation in the patterns of genetic and environmental influences on substance use progression from initiation to regular use to misuse, as well as differences depending on the particular substance.…”