Danielle Dick, a professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School who leads the Rutgers Addiction Research Center, has spent decades hunting genes that contribute to drug and alcohol addiction. While much remains unknown, improving technology has sped the rate of discovery. Dick’s lab has published five studies in the past month.
How much of addiction is genetic?
More than half of the differences in how likely people are to develop substance use problems stem from DNA differences, though it varies a little bit by substance. Research suggests alcohol addiction is about 50 percent heritable, while addiction to other drugs is as much as 70 percent heritable. To read the full story.