Genetics of Alcohol Use Disorder: A Role for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells?

ABSTRACT: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) affects millions of people and costs nearly 250 billion dollars annually. Few effective FDA-approved treatments exist, and more are needed. AUDs have a strong heritability, but only a few genes have been identified with a large effect size on disease phenotype. Genomewide association studies (GWASs) have identified common variants with low effect sizes, most of which are in noncoding regions of the genome. Animal models frequently fail to recapitulate key molecular features of neuropsychiatric disease due to the polygenic nature of the disease, partial conservation of coding regions, and significant disparity in noncoding regions. By contrast, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) derived from patients provide a powerful platform for evaluating genes iden

SUBMITTER: Prytkova I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6120805 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature