Alcoholism, a major public health problem, has been shown to have a partly genetic origin which creates a theoretical basis for the search for.biological phenotypic markers for this disease. Identification of such markers could advance understanding of the pathophysiological basis of alcoholism and, perhaps, lead to the development of new methods of determination of biological vulnerability for alcoholism at an early age. A preference for sweets has been shown to strongly correlate with a preference for alcohol in genetic animal models of heavy alcohol intake. Results of a pilot human study have shown that 65 % of Caucasian male alcoholics prefer the highest concentration of sucrose offered, 0.83M, in a sweet preference test compared to only 16% of Caucasian, male nonalcoholics, Fisher's exact test p= .0003. The purpose of the present proposal is to carefully test the hypothesis that sweet liking, a robust and reliable psychophysical measure, reflects a genetic vulnerability for alcoholism. This hypothesis will be tested by examining whether sweet liking is more prevalent in a cohort of 50 nonalcoholic subjects with high genetic risk for alcoholism than in 50 nonalcoholic subjects with low genetic risk for alcoholism. This study will be focused on an African American sample which has been underrepresented in previous studies involving association between alcoholism and sweet preference. The subjects will be recruited at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC. Because sweet liking may be a neurobiologically determined trait, demonstrating linkage between sweet liking and alcoholism may advance the understanding of the pathophysiology of alcoholism, and thereby advance understanding of the pathophysiology of alcoholism, and thereby advance understanding of the etiology and treatment of this destructive disorder.
