CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 63Genetic Associations and EpidemiologyAlcohol Consumption and Health EffectsGenetic and phenotypic traits in livestock

Genetic evidence for assortative mating on alcohol consumption in the UK Biobank

Open access
Howe, Laurence J., Lawson, Daniel J., Davies, Neil M., St. Pourcain, Beate, Lewis, Sarah J., Davey Smith, George, Hemani, Gibran·2019·Nature Communications
DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-12424-xPMC PMC6864067

Published version of a preprint

Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Alcohol use is correlated within spouse-pairs, but it is difficult to disentangle effects of alcohol consumption on mate-selection from social factors or the shared spousal environment. We hypothesised that genetic variants related to alcohol consumption may, via their effect on alcohol behaviour, influence mate selection. Here, we find strong evidence that an individual’s self-reported alcohol consumption and their genotype at rs1229984, a missense variant in ADH1B , are associated with their partner’s self-reported alcohol use. Applying Mendelian randomization, we estimate that a unit increase in an individual’s weekly alcohol consumption increases partner’s alcohol consumption by 0.26 units (95% C.I. 0.15, 0.38; P = 8.20 × 10 −6 ). Furthermore, we find evidence of spousal genotypic concordance for rs1229984, suggesting that spousal concordance for alcohol consumption existed prior to cohabitation. Although the SNP is strongly associated with ancestry, our results suggest some concordance independent of population stratification. Our findings suggest that alcohol behaviour directly influences mate selection.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41467-019-12424-x

Cites

19 of 19 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • GWAS associations for some phenotypes estimated from samples of unrelated individuals also capture effects of demography (assortative mating and population stratification) and indirect genetic effects of relatives.

    “However, there is growing evidence that GWAS associations for some phenotypes estimated from samples of unrelated individuals also capture effects of demography7,8 (assortative mating9–11 and population stratification12) and indirect genetic effects of relatives13–19 (Fig. 1).”

    From Within-sibship genome-wide association analyses decrease bias in estimates of direct genetic effects (2022) · cites this paper as [9]

    The Introduction reports genetic evidence of assortative mating on alcohol consumption, and the Discussion says assortative mating could create associations between genetic and environmental factors in offspring. This supports the assortative-mating component for which this paper is cited, but our copy does not establish that GWAS associations estimated from unrelated individuals capture those effects. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 46

  1. [1]Vandenberg SG Assortative mating, or who marries whom? Behav. Genet. 1972 2 127 157 10.1007/BF01065686 4664207 · DOI
  2. [4]Silventoinen K Kaprio J Lahelma E Viken RJ Rose RJ Assortative mating by body height and BMI: Finnish twins and their spouses Am. J. Hum. Biol. 2003 15 620 627 10.1002/ajhb.10183 12953173 · DOI
  3. [6]Watson D Match makers and deal breakers: analyses of assortative mating in newlywed couples J. Personal. 2004 72 1029 1068 10.1111/j.0022-3506.2004.00289.x 15335336 · DOI
  4. [7]Agrawal A Assortative mating for cigarette smoking and for alcohol consumption in female Australian twins and their spouses Behav. Genet. 2006 36 553 566 10.1007/s10519-006-9081-8 16710775 · DOI
  5. [8]Hall RL Hesselbrock VM Stabenau JR Familial distribution of alcohol use: II. Assortative mating of alcoholic probands Behav. Genet. 1983 13 373 382 10.1007/BF01065775 6639562 · DOI
  6. [9]Hall RL Hesselbrock VM Stabenau JR Familial distribution of alcohol use: I. Assortative mating in the parents of alcoholics Behav. Genet. 1983 13 361 372 10.1007/BF01065774 6639561 · DOI
  7. [10]McLeod JD Spouse concordance for alcohol dependence and heavy drinking: evidence from a community sample Alcohol.: Clin. Exp. Res. 1993 17 1146 1155 10.1111/j.1530-0277.1993.tb05220.x 8116823 · DOI
  8. [11]Reynolds CA Barlow T Pedersen NL Alcohol, tobacco and caffeine use: spouse similarity processes Behav. Genet. 2006 36 201 10.1007/s10519-005-9026-7 16645902 · DOI
  9. [12]Grant JD Spousal concordance for alcohol dependence: evidence for assortative mating or spousal interaction effects? Alcohol.: Clin. Exp. Res. 2007 31 717 728 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2007.00356.x 17378921 · DOI
  10. [13]Ask H Rognmo K Torvik FA Røysamb E Tambs K Non-random mating and convergence over time for alcohol consumption, smoking, and exercise: the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study Behav. Genet. 2012 42 354 365 10.1007/s10519-011-9509-7 22005768 · DOI
  11. [14]Domingue BW Fletcher J Conley D Boardman JD Genetic and educational assortative mating among US adults Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 2014 111 7996 8000 10.1073/pnas.1321426111 24843128 PMC4050565 · DOI
  12. [15]Robinson MR Genetic evidence of assortative mating in humans. Nat. Hum. Behav. 2017 1 0016 10.1038/s41562-016-0016 · DOI · Paper page
  13. [16]Rawlik, K., Canela-Xandri, O. & Tenesa, A. Indirect assortative mating for human disease and longevity. Heredity123, 106–116 (2019). PMC6781106 30723306
  14. [17]Tenesa A Rawlik K Navarro P Canela-Xandri O Genetic determination of height-mediated mate choice Genome Biol. 2016 16 269 10.1186/s13059-015-0833-8 26781582 PMC4717574 · DOI
  15. [18]Hugh-Jones D Verweij KJ Pourcain BS Abdellaoui A Assortative mating on educational attainment leads to genetic spousal resemblance for polygenic scores Intelligence 2016 59 103 108 10.1016/j.intell.2016.08.005 · DOI
  16. [19]Verhulst B Neale MC Kendler KS The heritability of alcohol use disorders: a meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies Psychological Med. 2015 45 1061 1072 10.1017/S0033291714002165 PMC4345133 25171596 · DOI · Paper page
  17. [20]Walters GD The heritability of alcohol abuse and dependence: a meta-analysis of behavior genetic research Am. J. Drug Alcohol Abus. 2002 28 557 584 10.1081/ADA-120006742 12211366 · DOI
  18. [22]Gelernter J Genome-wide association study of alcohol dependence: significant findings in African-and European-Americans including novel risk loci Mol. Psychiatry 2014 19 41 10.1038/mp.2013.145 24166409 PMC4165335 · DOI
  19. [23]Park BL Extended genetic effects of ADH cluster genes on the risk of alcohol dependence: from GWAS to replication Hum. Genet. 2013 132 657 668 10.1007/s00439-013-1281-8 23456092 · DOI
  20. [25]Bierut LJ A genome-wide association study of alcohol dependence Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 2010 107 5082 5087 10.1073/pnas.0911109107 20202923 PMC2841942 · DOI · Paper page
  21. [26]Treutlein J Genome-wide association study of alcohol dependence Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 2009 66 773 784 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2009.83 19581569 PMC4229246 · DOI
  22. [27]Schumann G Genome-wide association and genetic functional studies identify autism susceptibility candidate 2 gene (AUTS2) in the regulation of alcohol consumption Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 2011 108 7119 7124 10.1073/pnas.1017288108 21471458 PMC3084048 · DOI · Paper page
  23. [29]Jorgenson E Genetic contributors to variation in alcohol consumption vary by race/ethnicity in a large multi-ethnic genome-wide association study Mol. Psychiatry 2017 22 1359 10.1038/mp.2017.101 28485404 PMC5568932 · DOI · Paper page
  24. [30]Edenberg HJ McClintick JN Alcohol dehydrogenases, aldehyde dehydrogenases, and alcohol use disorders: a critical review Alcohol.: Clin. Exp. Res. 2018 42 2281 2297 10.1111/acer.13904 30320893 PMC6286250 · DOI
  25. [31]Thomasson HR Alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenase genotypes and alcoholism in Chinese men Am. J. Hum. Genet. 1991 48 677 2014795 PMC1682953
  26. [34]Davey Smith G Hemani G Mendelian randomization: genetic anchors for causal inference in epidemiological studies Hum. Mol. Genet. 2014 23 R89 R98 10.1093/hmg/ddu328 25064373 PMC4170722 · DOI · Paper page
  27. [36]Price RA Vandenberg SG Spouse similarity in American and Swedish couples Behav. Genet. 1980 10 59 71 10.1007/BF01067319 7191703 · DOI
  28. [37]Pearson K Lee A On the laws of inheritance in man: I. Inheritance of physical characters Biometrika 1903 2 357 462 10.2307/2331507 · DOI
  29. [40]Canela-Xandri O Rawlik K Tenesa A An atlas of genetic associations in UK Biobank Nat. Genet. 2018 50 1593 10.1038/s41588-018-0248-z 30349118 PMC6707814 · DOI
  30. [41]Howe LJ Prenatal alcohol exposure and facial morphology in a UK cohort Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019 197 42 47 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.11.031 30772781 · DOI
  31. [45]Galinsky KJ Fast principal-component analysis reveals convergent evolution of ADH1B in Europe and East Asia Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2016 98 456 472 10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.12.022 26924531 PMC4827102 · DOI
  32. [50]Munafò MR Tilling K Taylor AE Evans DM Davey Smith G Collider scope: when selection bias can substantially influence observed associations Int. J. Epidemiol. 2017 47 226 235 10.1093/ije/dyx206 PMC5837306 29040562 · DOI · Paper page
  33. [51]Spiller, W., Slichter, D., Bowden, J. & Davey Smith, G. Detecting and correcting for bias in Mendelian randomization analyses using Gene-by-Environment interactions. Int. J. Epidemiol.48, 702–712 (2019). PMC6659360 30462199
  34. [53]Sudlow C UK Biobank: an open access resource for identifying the causes of a wide range of complex diseases of middle and old age PLoS Med. 2015 12 e1001779 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001779 25826379 PMC4380465 · DOI · Paper page
  35. [54]Bycroft C The UK Biobank resource with deep phenotyping and genomic data Nature 2018 562 203 10.1038/s41586-018-0579-z 30305743 PMC6786975 · DOI · Paper page
  36. [57]Genomes Project Consortium. A global reference for human genetic variation Nature 2015 526 68 74 10.1038/nature15393 26432245 PMC4750478 · DOI · Paper page
  37. [58]Mountjoy E Education and myopia: assessing the direction of causality by mendelian randomisation BMJ 2018 361 k2022 10.1136/bmj.k2022 29875094 PMC5987847 · DOI · Paper page
  38. [59]O’Connell J Haplotype estimation for biobank-scale data sets Nat. Genet. 2016 48 817 820 10.1038/ng.3583 27270105 PMC4926957 · DOI
  39. [60]Consortium, U. K. The UK10K project identifies rare variants in health and disease Nature 2015 526 82 90 10.1038/nature14962 26367797 PMC4773891 · DOI · Paper page
  40. [61]McCarthy S A reference panel of 64,976 haplotypes for genotype imputation Nat. Genet. 2016 48 1279 10.1038/ng.3643 27548312 PMC5388176 · DOI · Paper page
  41. [62]Hemani G The MR-Base platform supports systematic causal inference across the human phenome eLife 2018 7 e34408 10.7554/eLife.34408 29846171 PMC5976434 · DOI · Paper page
  42. [63]Wood AR Defining the role of common variation in the genomic and biological architecture of adult human height Nat. Genet. 2014 46 1173 10.1038/ng.3097 25282103 PMC4250049 · DOI · Paper page
  43. [64]Purcell S PLINK: a tool set for whole-genome association and population-based linkage analyses Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2007 81 559 575 10.1086/519795 17701901 PMC1950838 · DOI · Paper page
  44. [66]Zuccolo L Prenatal alcohol exposure and offspring cognition and school performance. A ‘Mendelian randomization’natural experiment Int. J. Epidemiol. 2013 42 1358 1370 10.1093/ije/dyt172 24065783 PMC3807618 · DOI
  45. [67]Haworth S Apparent latent structure within the UK Biobank sample has implications for epidemiological analysis Nat. Commun. 2019 10 333 10.1038/s41467-018-08219-1 30659178 PMC6338768 · DOI · Paper page
  46. [68]Leslie S The fine-scale genetic structure of the British population Nature 2015 519 309 10.1038/nature14230 25788095 PMC4632200 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Howe, L. J., Lawson, D. J., Davies, N. M., St. Pourcain, B., Lewis, S. J., Davey Smith, G., & Hemani, G.
Affiliations
University of Bristol (GB)
Corresponding author
Howe, Laurence J.
ORCID
Venue
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2019-11-19
Volume
10
Issue
1
Pages
5039-5039
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41467-019-12424-x
PMC
PMC6864067
OpenAlex
W2976165123
Cited by
63
References
19
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2
FWCI
4.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Explore Bristol Research (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Wellcome Trust (WT104125MA)
  • RCUK | Economic and Social Research Council (ES/N000757/1)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pathology and Forensic Medicine › Alcohol Consumption and Health Effects
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock
Keywords
assortative mating, alcohol consumption, mate choice, ADH1B, rs1229984, spousal concordance, genetic variants, Mendelian randomization, population stratification, ancestry
MeSH terms
Adult, Alcohol Dehydrogenase, Alcohol Drinking, Alcoholism, Female, Genotype, United Kingdom, Humans, Male, Marriage, Phenotype, Reproduction, Biological Specimen Banks, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Self Report

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review