The relationship between alcoholism and DBI gene polymorphism in Japanese--genotyping of the +529A/T in DBI gene polymorphism based on PCR.

As a help of elucidate of the pathogenesis of alcohol dependence, we investigated the relationship between the genetic variants of the diazepam biding inhibitor (DBI) gene polymorphism and alcoholism. We analyzed the DBI genotypes using a polymerase chain reaction with confronting two-pair novel primers (PCR-CTPP) method in 180 healthy controls and 43 alcoholic. There was a significant difference in the +529A/T (rs8192503) polymorphism allele frequency of the DBI gene (P = 0.0421) between the current alcoholics and healthy controls. The present data using the novel PCR method suggested that mutation allele of the DBI gene polymorphism was one of the risk factors for alcoholism.