A genetic study of alcoholism in the Moscow population: preliminary findings

This article reports the preliminary results of a family study of alcoholism in the Moscow population. A comparison of male and female alcoholic inpatients revealed differences between them in the patterns of alcoholism development and in the frequencies of the disorder among male and female probands' parents and siblings. Those differences, particularly those observed in the fathers of the female and male probands, may suggest that the liability and genetic predisposition to alcoholism in female alcoholics, on the average, are higher than those in male alcoholics. There were also differences between male and female probands in the frequencies of the types of drinking behavior (including alcoholism) we used to characterize individual phenotypes as to the liability to alcoholism in the probands' parents and spouses, indicating that the higher the liability and/or genetic predisposition to alcoholism the higher the probability of the proband's marriage to an individual with a higher liability to the disorder. The data on the comparison of the probands' children with their parents affectedness imply the possibility of a relationship between the genetic predisposition to alcoholism and the risk for mental and somatic disturbances in offspring of alcoholics.