An association between the DAT1 polymorphism and smoking behavior in young adults from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. |
| |
Authors: | David S Timberlake Brett C Haberstick Jeffrey M Lessem Andrew Smolen Marissa Ehringer John K Hewitt Christian Hopfer |
| |
Institution: | Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0447, USA. david.timberlake@colorado.edu |
| |
Abstract: | Associations between smoking behavior and polymorphisms in the dopaminergic genes (DAT1 and DRD2) were tested by using within- and between-family measures of allelic transmission in 2,448 young adults from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The 9-repeat allele of the dopamine transporter gene polymorphism (DAT1) was inversely associated with smoking in samples that included all subjects and only those who had initiated smoking, accounting for approximately 1% of the variance. Never smokers and current nonsmokers had an excess transmission of the 9-repeat allele compared with regular smokers, suggesting a protective effect of the 9-repeat allele, which is hypothesized to alter synaptic dopamine levels. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|