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Alcohol exposure triggers changes in gene expression and biological pathways in human brain. We explored alterations in gene expression in the Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC) of 65 alcoholics and 73 controls of European descent, and identified 129 genes that showed altered expression (FDR < 0.05) in subjects with alcohol dependence. Differentially expressed genes were enriched for pathways related to interferon signaling and Growth Arrest and DNA Damage-inducible 45 (GADD45) signaling. A coexpression module (thistle2) identified by weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was significantly correlated with alcohol dependence, alcohol consumption, and AUDIT scores. Genes in the thistle2 module were enriched with genes related to calcium signaling pathways and showed significant downregulation of these pathways, as well as enrichment for biological processes related to nicotine response and opioid signaling. A second module (brown4) showed significant upregulation of pathways related to immune signaling. Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) for genes in the brown4 module were also enriched for genetic associations with alcohol dependence and alcohol consumption in large genome-wide studies included in the Psychiatric Genetic Consortium and the UK Biobank's alcohol consumption dataset. By leveraging multi-omics data, this transcriptome analysis has identified genes and biological pathways that could provide insight for identifying therapeutic targets for alcohol dependence.

Chronic alcohol consumption may induce gene expression alterations in brain reward regions such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), modulating the risk of alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Transcriptome profiles of 23 AUD cases and 23 matched controls (16 pairs of males and 7 pairs of females) in postmortem PFC were generated using Illumina's HumanHT-12 v4 Expression BeadChip. Probe-level differentially expressed genes and gene modules in AUD subjects were identified using multiple linear regression and weighted gene co-expression network analyses. The enrichment of differentially co-expressed genes in alcohol dependence-associated genes identified by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) was examined using gene set enrichment analysis. Biological pathways overrepresented by differentially co-expressed genes were uncovered using DAVID bioinformatics resources. Three AUD-associated gene modules in males [Module 1 (561 probes mapping to 505 genes): r = 0.42, P(correlation) = 0.020; Module 2 (815 probes mapping to 713 genes): r = 0.41, P(correlation) = 0.020; Module 3 (1,446 probes mapping to 1,305 genes): r = -0.38, P(correlation) = 0.030] and one AUD-associated gene module in females [Module 4 (683 probes mapping to 652 genes): r = 0.64, P(correlation) = 0.010] were identified. Differentially expressed genes mapped by significant expression probes (P(nominal) ≤ 0.05) clustered in Modules 1 and 2 were enriched in GWAS-identified alcohol dependence-associated genes [Module 1 (134 genes): P = 0.028; Module 2 (243 genes): P = 0.004]. These differentially expressed genes, including ALDH2, ALDH7A1, and ALDH9A1, are involved in cellular functions such as aldehyde detoxification, mitochondrial function, and fatty acid metabolism. Our study revealed differentially co-expressed genes in postmortem PFC of AUD subjects and demonstrated that some of these differentially co-expressed genes participate in alcohol metabolism.