engleski

Serotonin transporter gene and alcoholism : an association study using family based design

Alcoholism is a devastating disorder affecting up to 10% of the general population. Besides environmental factors, contribution of genetic factors has been suggested by twin-, family- and adoption studies. Genes coding for components of the dopaminergic and/or the serotonergic system may play a role in the development of alcoholism. A polymorphism in the 59 – flanking regulatory region of the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) that results in allelic variation of 5-HTT expression has been described recently. The polymorphism consists of a repetitive element. In caucasians, the most frequent alleles have 14(s-allele) or 16 (l-allele) repeats. We have used a familybased design for the analysis of this polymorphism in order to avoid stratification problems. Ninety-four alcoholics with their parents have been genotyped for the promotor polymorphism of the 5-HTT gene. Seventy-two of these simplex families were ascertained in Germany, 22 in Hungary (Pecs). Using TDT-statistics, we observed that the s-allele was preferentially transmitted 64 times as opposed to 36 times non-transmitted (TDT = 7.84, corrected P-value = .0064). We conclude, that the s-allele of the serotonin transporter gene might have an impact on the development of alcohol dependence.

serotonin transporter; gene polymorphism; alcoholism

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