Drinking too much: is it in our genes? Addiction expert says yes, and looks at treatment through precision medicine
- A predisposition to alcohol abuse can be inherited from relatives in a way not too dissimilar to height, with many thousands of gene variants influencing it
- This means rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, treatment tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup is the answer, but more time and research is needed
How much alcohol is too much, and what makes some people more likely to suffer from alcohol use disorder, others less?
These questions have been top of mind for researchers who study the effects of alcohol on the human body. One of them is Henry Kranzler, a psychiatry professor and director of the Center for Studies of Addiction at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
For more than 20 years, his work has focused on the genetics of substance dependence and whether precision medicine – medicine targeted to an individual’s genetic makeup – can help treat addictions.
His work has garnered numerous accolades, so he’s only partly joking when he points out that his group’s recent research got the ultimate recognition: A study suggesting that alcohol use ages and shrinks the brain was the subject of a [long-running US comedy show] Saturday Night Live segment punchline.
You were one of the researchers on a recent study that found even modest alcohol consumption – a few beers or glasses of wine a week – may carry risks to the brain. What are those risks?
We found that drinking more than about one drink a day was associated with reductions in brain volume, which could have cognitive effects.