Год выпуска: 2011 Автор: Robert Moyer and Wolfgang Sadee Издательство: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing Страниц: 96 ISBN: 9783844384161
Описание
Drug addiction is a chronic disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and taking despite serious negative consequences. Association studies have identified a number of candidate genes harboring variants associated with susceptibility to addiction, but the causative variants frequently remain unknown. A solution to the challenge of identifying causative variants is the thorough characterization of functional genetic polymorphisms and their effects on regulation of candidate genes. I focused on candidate genes for drug addiction (ARRB2, DRD2, and DRD3) and made some novel and significant findings: The effects of two intronic SNPs in the human dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) gene, previously shown to alter DRD2 alternative splicing, were confirmed in human brain autopsy tissues obtained from a population of cocaine abusers and controls. The same SNPs were significantly associated with cocaine abuse. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of the functional genetic...
