This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Stevens S. Smith, PhD; David A. Gorelick, MD, PhD; Bruce F. O'Hara, PhD; George R. Uhl, MD, PhD
National Institute on Drug Abuse Baltimore, Md

JAMA. 1991;265(20):2667-2668.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor. —

Two JAMA reports differ in describing the association between a D₂ dopamine receptor gene allele and alcoholism. Blum et al¹ found that the Al allele of the D₂ gene was present in a significantly higher percentage of 35 alcoholics (69%) than in 35 nonalcoholic controls (20%). Diagnoses were made post mortem; therefore, limited descriptive information was available. Bolos et al² assessed the gene's distribution in a group of 40 white alcoholics (38% Al) and 127 racially matched controls (30% Al) but found no evidence for an association between the D₂ receptor allele and alcoholism.

There is a limitation in the second study. Although Bolos et al conducted thorough clinical assessments of alcoholic subjects, they present no characteristics (except race) of their "control" subjects. Their control subjects could be alcoholics (or have other relevant psychiatric diagnoses, such as affective disorder). Further, the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?