Genetic and environmental influence on alcohol intent and alcohol sips among U.S. children–Effects across sex, race, and ethnicity

Abstract

Alcohol intent (the susceptibility to initiating alcohol use) and alcohol sips (the initiation of alcohol) in youth are a multifactorial puzzle with many components. This research aims to examine the connection between genetic and environmental factors across sex, race and ethnicity. Methods Data was obtained from the twin hub of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study at baseline (2016–2018). Variance component models were conducted to dissect the additive genetic (A), common (C) and unique environmental (E) effects on alcohol traits. The proportion of the total alcohol phenotypic variation attributable to additive genetic factors is reported as heritability (h2). Results The sample (n = 1,772) included an approximately equal male-female distribution. The 886 same-sex twin pairs were 60.4% dizygotic (DZ), 39.6% monozygotic (MZ), 65.4% non-Hispanic Whites, 13.9% non-Hispanic Blacks, 10.8% of Hispanics with a mean age of 121.2 months. Overall, genetic predisposition was moderate for alcohol intent (h2 = 28%, p = .006) and low for alcohol initiation (h2 = 4%, p = 0.83). Hispanics (h2 = 53%, p < .0001) and Blacks (h2 = 48%, p < .0001) demonstrated higher alcohol intent due to additive genetic factors than Whites (h2 = 34%, p