Kenneth Blum¹⁻⁹˒¹²*, Mark S Gold²˒¹⁵, Lloyd G Mitchell¹⁰˒¹¹, Kareem W Washington¹⁰, David Baron², Panayotis K Thanos¹³, Bruce Steinberg¹⁴, Edward J Modestino¹⁴, Lyle Fried⁷, and Rajendra D Badgaiyan¹²
¹Department of Psychiatry & McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA
²Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
³Division of Applied Clinical Research & Education, Dominion Diagnostics, North Kingstown, RI, USA
?Department of Neurogenetics, Geneus Health, San Antonio, TX, USA
?Division of Reward Deficiency Syndrome and Addiction Therapy, Nupathway, Innsbrook, MO, USA
?Retro Therapy, Washington DC, USA
?Igene LLC, Austin, TX, USA
?Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Psychology, Hungary
?NeuroPsychoSocial Genomics Initiative, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA
¹?Department of Genetics and Human Genetics, Howard University College of Medicine, USA
¹¹Retro Therapy, Inc., Washington, DC, USA
¹²Department of Psychiatry, Wright University, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton, OH, USA
¹³Department of Psychology, Addiction Research Institute, Buffalo University, Buffalo, NY, USA
¹?Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA
¹?Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
Corresponding Author:
Kenneth Blum, Department of Psychiatry & McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA, Tel: 352-294-4911; Fax: 352- 392-9887; Email: drd2gene@gmail.com
Keywords: Reward deficiency syndrome; Dopamine homeostasis; Dopamine D2 receptor Gene; Addiction medicine; Gene therapy
Abstract
It has been over 27 years since Blum & Noble discovered the first association of the DRD2 A1 allele in severe alcoholism, suggesting reward as the real phenotype, not alcoholism. This has been acknowledged by an explosion of research in the arena of Psychiatric Genetics. To date, a PubMed search listed 6,839 studies (5-15- 17). The A1 allele has been associated with substance use disorders other than alcoholism, including cocaine, nicotine dependence, polysubstance abuse and many Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS) behaviors substance and non-substance related. Certainly following extensive controversy, the emerging evidence suggests that the DRD2 is a reinforcement or reward gene. In fact, it could represent one of the most prominent single-gene determinants of susceptibility to severe substance abuse/reward deficiency. While, however, the environment through epigenetic impact and other genes, when combined, still play the larger role, targeting the DRD2 gene through the novel genetic rewriting of the DNA code at the mRNA level may hold the greatest promise to date for potentially “curing” the RDS phenotype.
Citation
Blum K, Gold MS, Mitchell LG, Washington KW, Baron D, Thanos PK, et al. Global Evidence for the Key Role of the Dopamine D2 Receptor Gene (DRD2) and DRD2 Receptors in Alcoholism. SM J Neurol Neurosci. 2017; 3(1): 1006s.
