Tuesday, June 26, 2007

MAOA, alcoholism & abuse   posted by Razib @ 6/26/2007 09:23:00 PM
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Gene Variant Increases Risk For Alcoholism Following Childhood Abuse. We've been following this story for years in various forms. Here's the article in Molecular Psychiatry (a Nature journal). From the abstract:
The MAOA-LPR low activity allele was associated with alcoholism...particularly antisocial alcoholism...only among sexually abused subjects. Sexually abused women who were homozygous for the low activity allele had higher rates of alcoholism and ASPD, and more ASPD symptoms, than abused women homozygous for the high activity allele. Heterozygous women displayed an intermediate risk pattern...The MAOA-LPR low activity allele was found on three different haplotypes. The most abundant MAOA haplotype containing the MAOA-LPR low activity allele was found in excess among alcoholics...and antisocial alcoholics...Finally, a MAOB haplotype, which we termed haplotype C, was significantly associated with alcoholism...and to a lesser extent with antisocial alcoholism....

(the ellipses are p-values)

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