Race+and+Alcoholism

=Peer-Reviewed Papers=

=Discussion Area= Having difficulty understanding the papers? Have a question? Add your comments/questions below and we will use this space to build our understanding...

The first article discusses factors such as "exaggerated machismo" (in hispanics) and "social disorganization e.g. (family breakdown and psychological dysfunction)" (in blacks). It also says how each minority presents many varying results concerning drinking. Couldn't this mean that alcohol consumption has more to do with individual/family history/culture and personality than race or ethnicity? Absolutely.

What exactly makes the ADH2*1, ADH2*2, and ADH2*3 alleles different from each other?

So alcohol dehydrogenases are the general group of enzymes that metabolize alcohol in the body. We have a handful of different ones, and //ADH2// is one of the genes that has been linked in studies to alcoholism. The different alleles represent slightly different versions of the //ADH2// gene -- each has a single nucleotide change (point mutation), that results in a single different amino acid in the polypeptide sequence (missense). //ADH2*1// is the "typical" version, while the others are the mutated versions (esp. //ADH2*2//) that may be linked to alcoholism.