Alcoholism and panic disorder: co-occurrence and co-transmission in families

The co-occurrence of alcoholism and anxiety disorders in epidemiological and clinical samples is well established. Self-medication of anxiety disorder probands with the anxiolytic substance alcohol might be one reason for this association. Common susceptibility factors of both disorders might be alternative explanations. Controlled family studies recruiting probands with panic disorder and alcoholism are powerful tools to answer this question. A family study of this kind, however, is not available. The present study investigated 113 families of probands with either panic disorder or alcoholism or both (but without affective or psychotic disorders) and 80 families of healthy controls in order to estimate the degree of co-occurrence of the two disorders in non-treated samples of relatives and to explore the magnitude of overlap between susceptibility factors of the two disorders. The co-occurrence of the two disorders was relatively rare in all samples of families under study. Overlap of susceptibility factors was demonstrated by an elevated risk of alcoholism in relatives of probands with panic disorder.