Genetic disposition to addictive disorders - current knowledge and future perspectives

It is well established that addictive disorders have a strong genetic background. Multiple, and in part interacting, genes are likely to be responsible for the disease phenotype, making the search for underlying alleles a challenging and complicated task. Linkage analyses and association studies have failed to unequivocally identify underlying genes. Conversely, genome sequencing and the systematic search for polymorphic marker loci have yielded dense chromosome maps so that, along with automated genotyping, the identification of individual genes will soon become possible. Initial results provide hints that regulators of gene expression might play an important role in addiction.