Substance Use Disorders Working Group Leadership
Work with us!
If you have questions regarding the PGC SUD workgroup or projects that are currently being conducted, please contact the workgroup chairs.
For any questions or ideas related to research dissemination (e.g., via this webpage, social media, blogs, press outlets), please contact the workgroup outreach liaison.
If you have questions about how to access summary statistics or genotype-level data, or are interested to submit a secondary analysis proposal, please contact the workgroup data access committee representative.
About Us
The Substance Use Disorder (SUD) workgroup has been part of the PGC since 2014, with funding support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. We study the use and misuse of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine/psychostimulants, opioids, tobacco and other illicit substances, and how they relate to other psychiatric disorders and traits. SUDs cause a tremendous amount of suffering to those with the disorder and to their families, and have significant societal costs. Disorders are comorbid with many other psychiatric and somatic disorders. Genetic variations contribute to the differences among individuals in risk for these disorders and their comorbidities. They also are greatly influenced by environmental factors.
Our goals are to identify the genetic contributions to SUDs and their comorbidities with multiple other mental health and physical conditions, and the biological pathways that underlie their development. There are differences between the genetic underpinnings of substance use (e.g., typical alcohol consumption, ever using cannabis) and substance use disorders/addiction, and we seek to increase our understanding of these differences. As part of our work to understand the genetic contributions to these disorders, we collaborate with neuroscientists, cross-species translational researchers, and biostatisticians.
The contributions of individual genetic variants are mostly very small, so identifying them requires very large numbers of individuals for analysis. We are particularly motivated to enhance the representation of diverse populations in our genetic discovery efforts and characterize genetic risk for use of and dependence on substances that may be uniquely prevalent in different parts of the world. We collaborate with other PGC groups to examine the genetic underpinnings of comorbidity.
Get Involved!
We encourage groups who have genetic data on these disorders to join us as active participants, so that we can aggregate the data and analyze it. All investigators who contribute data retain control of their data, benefit from the rigorous quality control that we perform on all incoming datasets, contribute scientifically to resulting publications, and consult on the overall research direction of the team. If you are interested in learning more about our group, please contact Arpana Agrawal, Howard Edenberg, or Joel Gelernter.)
Major Accomplishments
Publications
Hatoum et al., Multivariate genome-wide association meta-analysis of over 1 million subjects identifies loci underlying multiple substance use disorders. Nat Mental Health; 2023 Mar;1(3):210-223. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10217792/
Johnson et al., A large-scale genome-wide association study meta-analysis of cannabis use disorder. Lancet Psychiatry. 2020 Dec;7(12):1032–1045. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7674631/
Polimanti et al., Leveraging genome-wide data to investigate differences between opioid use vs. opioid dependence in 41,176 individuals from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Mol Psychiatry. 2020 Feb 26;25(8):1673–1687. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7392789/
Walters et al. 2018. Transancestral GWAS of alcohol dependence reveals common genetic underpinnings with psychiatric disorders. Nature Neuroscience 21(12):1656–1669. PMID: 30482948 https://rdcu.be/bb0e6
Polimanti R, Peterson RE, Ong JS, MacGregor S, Edwards AC, Clarke TK, Frank J, Gerring Z, Gillespie NA, Lind PA, Maes HH, Martin NG, Mbarek H, Medland SE, Streit F; Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Agrawal A, Edenberg HJ, Kendler KS, Lewis CM, Sullivan PF, Wray NR, Gelernter J, Derks EM. (2019) Evidence of causal effect of major depression on alcohol dependence: findings from the psychiatric genomics consortium. Psychol Med. 49(7):1218-122. PMID: 30929657. PMCID: PMC6565601 DOI: 10.1017/S0033291719000667
Polimanti R, Walters RK, Johnson EC, McClintick JN, Adkins AE, Adkins DE, Bacanu S-A, Bierut LJ, Bigdeli TB, Brown S, Bucholz KK, Copeland WE, Costello EJ, Degenhardt L, Farrer LA, Foroud TM, Fox L, Goate AM, Grucza R, Hack LM, Hancock DB, Hartz SM, Heath AC, Hewitt JK, Hopfer CJ, Johnson EO, Kendler KS, Kranzler HR, Krauter K, Lai D, Madden PAF, Martin NG, Maes HH, Nelson EC, Peterson RE, Porjesz B, Riley BP, Saccone N, Stallings M, Wall TL, Webb BT, Wetherill L, Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Substance Use Disorders Workgroup, Edenberg HJ, Agrawal A, Gelernter J, (2020) Leveraging genome-wide data to investigate differences between opioid use vs. opioid dependence in 41,176 individuals from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Molecular Psychiatry. 26 Feb 2020 [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 32099098. DOI: 10.1038/s41380-020-0677-9
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