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Monday, August 17, 2009

A non-synonymous variant in ADH1B is strongly associated with prenatal alcohol use in a European sample of pregnant women
Human Molecular Genetics Advance Access published online on August 17, 2009

Pregnant women are advised to abstain from alcohol despite insufficient evidence on the fetal consequences of moderate prenatal alcohol use. Mendelian randomization could help distinguish causal effects from artifacts due to residual confounding and measurement errors, however polymorphisms reliably associated with alcohol phenotypes are needed. We aimed to test whether alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) gene variants were associated with alcohol use before and during pregnancy.

We confirmed the established association of rs1229984 with reduced alcohol consumption over the life-course, contributing new evidence of an effect before and during pregnancy.


Request Reprint E-Mail: l.zuccolo@bristol.ac.uk

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