Genetic susceptibility for addiction: Searching of risk loci for the widespread drugs of abuse

Addiction to drugs of abuse is the major health and social issue, for its morbidity and mortality, individual and society cost, violence and legal problems involvement. The susceptibility to addiction has a complex genetic basis characterized by phenotypic and genetic heterogeneity as well as polygenicity. Both linkage mapping and association mapping have identified susceptibility loci for addiction-related phenotypes. In this study we limit our focus to gamma-amino butyric acid A receptor alpha 2 (GABRA2), one of the candidate gene in addiction, in order to investigate the genetic susceptibility of alcoholism. 10 SNPs across the 3′-GABRA2 were analyzed in an Italian sample of 149 cases and 278 healthy controls. No SNP and haplotype association of 3′-GABRA2 with AUDs was found, in contrast to previous reports in other Caucasian populations.