The genetics of addictions: uncovering the genes

By David Goldman, G. Oroszi, F. Ducci. Nature reviews genetics, 2005

1,044 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The addictions are common chronic psychiatric diseases that today are prevented and treated using relatively untargeted and only partially effective methods. The addictions are moderately to highly heritable, which is paradoxical because these disorders require use; a choice that is itself modulated by both genes and environment. The addictions are interrelated and related to other psychiatric diseases by common neurobiological pathways, including those that modulate reward, behavioural control and the anxiety or stress response. Our future understanding of addictions will be enhanced by the identification of genes that have a role in altered substance-specific vulnerabilities such as variation in drug metabolism or drug receptors and a role in shared vulnerabilities such as variation in reward or stress resiliency.

Subfields: Biological Psychiatry, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5a48b60ad19df9281b6164cb37de1b724046d908

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Citations in the corpus

The Role of Early Life Stress as a Predictor for Alcohol and Drug Dependence (2010, background): “It is well established that the heritability (the genetic component of the variance) of alcoholism is around 50%; similarly, the heritability of cocaine and opiate addiction is around 60–70% (Goldman et al. 2005).”
Prevention of Problem Gambling: A Comprehensive Review of the Evidence (2008, background): “the substance (Agrawal & Lynskey, 2008; Goldman et al., 2005) as well as the heritability estimates of the major psychiatric disorders, which range from 30 – 85% (Shih et al.”
Conceptual Framework of Harmful Gambling: An International Collaboration (2013, background): “For example, the heritability estimates of substance dependence range from 30% to 70%, depending on the substance (Agrawal & Lynskey,2008; Goldman et al., 2005).”
Transcriptional and Epigenetic Mechanisms of Addiction (2011, background): “Entrance into this state is strongly influenced by both an individual's genetic constitution and the psychological and social context in which drug exposure occur”
Neural mechanisms of addiction: the role of reward-related learning and memory. (2006, background): “Each of these interindividual differences appears to reflect the interaction of multiple genetic and nongenetic factors (Kendler et al. 2000, 2003; Goldman et al. 2005).”