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Genetics: Correcting for genetic associations between alcohol and

disease

Nature Communications
January 13, 2021

Genetic studies on self-reported traits such as alcohol consumption may

be biased by misreporting and changes in behaviour, reports a study in
Nature Communications this week. These findings could help to explain
conflicting reports about the correlation between alcohol consumption and
certain diseases.

Increased alcohol consumption has long been believed to increase the risk of many different diseases. However,
recent studies have found that the genetic basis for alcohol consumption is negatively correlated with certain
diseases, suggesting a possible protective effect of alcohol against disease. One possible explanation for this is that
patients with a disease may change their alcohol consumption upon diagnosis or misreport their alcohol
consumption in a survey.

Jian Yang and colleagues used data from 455,607 individuals in the UK Biobank to investigate whether misreporting
and changes in behaviour can bias the results of genetic studies on alcohol consumption. Without correcting for
misreporting or changes in behaviour, they found negative genetic correlations between alcohol consumption and
type-2 diabetes, hypertensive disease and iron deficient anaemias. After correcting for misreporting and behavioural
changes, the negative correlations disappeared and they found positive correlations with eight different conditions,
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a method to correct for them. However, the authors note that this bias does not necessarily apply to all
populations or behavioural traits.
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doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20237-6

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