Genome-wide association study of alcohol consumption and genetic overlap with other health-related traits in UK Biobank (N=112 117)

Alcohol consumption has been linked to over 200 diseases and is responsible for over 5% of the global disease burden. Well-known genetic variants in alcohol metabolizing genes, for example, ALDH2 and ADH1B , are strongly associated with alcohol consumption but have limited impact in European populations where they are found at low frequency. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of self-reported alcohol consumption in 112 117 individuals in the UK Biobank (UKB) sample of white British individuals. We report significant genome-wide associations at 14 loci. These include single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in alcohol metabolizing genes ( ADH1B/ADH1C/ADH5 ) and two loci in KLB , a gene recently associated with alcohol consumption. We also identify SNPs at novel loci including GCKR , CADM2 and FAM69C . Gene-based analyses found significant associations with genes implicated in the neurobiology of substance use ( DRD2 , PDE4B ). GCTA analyses found a significant SNP-based heritability of self-reported alcohol consumption of 13% (se=0.01). Sex-specific analyses found largely overlapping GWAS loci and the genetic correlation (rG) between male and female alcohol consumption was 0.90 (s.e.=0.09, P -value=7.16 × 10 −23 ). Using LD score regression, genetic overlap was found between alcohol consumption and years of schooling (rG=0.18, s.e.=0.03), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (rG=0.28, s.e.=0.05), smoking (rG=0.40, s.e.=0.06) and various anthropometric traits (for example, overweight, rG=−0.19, s.e.=0.05). This study replicates the association between alcohol consumption and alcohol metabolizing genes and KLB , and identifies novel gene associations that should be the focus of future studies investigating the neurobiology of alcohol consumption.

Genome-wide association study of alcohol consumption and genetic overlap with other health-related traits in UK Biobank (N=112 117) | Litlas