Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress 2023 EHA Congress 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

A round-up of the ONWARDS phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the novel weekly insulin icodec in people with diabetes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Journal of Gambling Studies
Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies 2/2015

01-06-2015 | Original Paper

COMT Associations with Disordered Gambling and Drinking Measures

Authors: Casey R. Guillot, Jennifer R. Fanning, Tiebing Liang, Mitchell E. Berman

Published in: Journal of Gambling Studies | Issue 2/2015

Login to get access

Abstract

Disordered gambling and alcohol dependence are influenced by unique and shared genetic factors. Although the evidence is mixed, some research has linked catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) rs4680 (or COMT Val158Met) to the development of gambling or drinking problems; however, no molecular genetic study has jointly examined gambling and drinking problems. Furthermore, the majority of past studies examined gambling or drinking problems using a case–control design. The purpose of the current study was to examine associations of COMT rs4680 with dimensionally and categorically measured gambling and drinking problems in a nonclinical sample (139 Caucasian adults). The current study found that COMT rs4680 was related to both dimensionally and categorically measured gambling and drinking problems. It appears that the COMT Met/Met genotype may be a genetic risk factor that contributes to the development of both gambling and drinking problems.
Literature
Abi-Dargham, A., Rodenhiser, J., Printz, D., Zea-Ponce, Y., Gil, R., Kegeles, L. S., et al. (2000). Increased baseline occupancy of D2 receptors by dopamine in schizophrenia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97, 8104–8109.CrossRef
Berridge, K. C. (2007). The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: The case for incentive salience. Psychopharmacology, 191, 391–431.CrossRefPubMed
Bierut, L. J., Agrawal, A., Bucholz, K. K., Doheny, K. F., Laurie, C., Pugh, E., et al. (2010). A genome-wide association study of alcohol dependence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107, 5082–5087.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Bilder, R. M., Volavka, J., Lachman, H. M., & Grace, A. A. (2004). The catechol-O-methyltransferase polymorphism: Relations to the tonic–phasic dopamine hypothesis and neuropsychiatric phenotypes. Neuropsychopharmacology, 29, 1943–1961.CrossRefPubMed
Boettiger, C. A., Mitchell, J. M., Tavares, V. C., Robertson, M., Joslyn, G., D’Esposito, M., et al. (2007). Immediate reward bias in humans: Fronto-parietal networks and a role for the catechol-O-methyltransferase 158Val/Val genotype. The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 14383–14391.CrossRefPubMed
Bonke, J., & Borregaard, K. (2009). The prevalence of problematic gambling behaviour: A scandinavian comparison. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 37, 654–660.CrossRefPubMed
Bousman, C. A., Glatt, S. J., Cherner, M., Atkinson, J. H., Grant, I., Tsuang, M. T., et al. (2010). Preliminary evidence of ethnic divergence in associations of putative genetic variants for methamphetamine dependence. Psychiatry Research, 178, 295–298.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Braverman, J., LaBrie, R. A., & Shaffer, H. J. (2011). A taxometric analysis of actual internet sports gambling behavior. Psychological Assessment, 23, 234–244.CrossRefPubMed
Cagniard, B., Balsam, P. D., Brunner, D., & Zhuang, X. (2006). Mice with chronically elevated dopamine exhibit enhanced motivation, but not learning, for a food reward. Neuropsychopharmacology, 31, 1362–1370.CrossRefPubMed
Chen, J., Lipska, B. K., Halim, N., Ma, Q. D., Matsumoto, M., Melhem, S., et al. (2004). Functional analysis of genetic variation in catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT): Effects on mRNA, protein, and enzyme activity in postmortem human brain. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 75, 807–821.CrossRef
Cohen, J. (2009). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press. (Original work published 1988).
Comings, D. E., Gade-Andavolu, R., Gonzalez, N., Wu, S., Muhleman, D., Chen, C., et al. (2001). The additive effect of neurotransmitter genes in pathological gambling. Clinical Genetics, 60, 107–116.CrossRefPubMed
Foroud, T., Wetherill, L. F., Dick, D. M., Hesselbrock, V., Nurnberger, J. I., Kramer, J., et al. (2007). Lack of association of alcohol dependence and habitual smoking with catechol-O-methyltransferase. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 31, 1773–1779.CrossRef
Gianotti, L. R. R., Figner, B., Ebstein, R. P., & Knoch, D. (2012). Why some people discount more than others: Baseline activation in the dorsal PFC mediates the link between COMT genotype and impatient choice. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6. doi:10.​3389/​fnins.​2012.​00054.
Green, B. A., Ahmed, A. O., Marcus, D. K., & Walters, G. D. (2011). The latent structure of alcohol use pathology in an epidemiological sample. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 45, 225–233.CrossRefPubMed
Hasin, D. S., Stinson, F. S., Ogburn, E., & Grant, B. F. (2007). Prevalence, correlates, disability, and comorbidity of DSM-IV alcohol abuse and dependence in the United States: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on alcohol and related conditions. Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 830–842.CrossRefPubMed
Johnson, P. S., Madden, G. J., & Stein, J. S. (2012). Effects of acute pramipexole on male rats’ preference for gambling-like rewards II. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 20, 167–172.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Joutsa, J., Johansson, J., Niemela, S., Ollikainen, A., Hirvonen, M. M., Piepponen, P., et al. (2012). Mesolimbic dopamine release is linked to symptom severity in pathological gambling. NeuroImage, 60, 1992–1999.CrossRefPubMed
Kapur, S. (2003). Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: A framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 13–23.CrossRefPubMed
Kauhanen, J., Hallikainen, T., Tuomainen, T. P., Koulu, M., Karvonen, M. K., Salonen, J. T., et al. (2000). Association between the functional polymorphism of catechol-O-methyltransferase gene and alcohol consumption among social drinkers. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 24, 135–139.CrossRefPubMed
Keppel, G. (1991). Design and analysis: A researcher’s handbook (3rd ed.). NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Kessler, R. C., Hwang, I., LaBrie, R., Petukhova, M., Sampson, N. A., Winters, K. C., et al. (2008). The prevalence and correlates of DSM-IV pathological gambling in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Psychological Medicine, 38, 1351–1360.PubMedCentralPubMed
Kincaid, H., Daniels, R., Dellis, A., Hofmeyr, A., Rousseau, J., Sharp, C., et al. (2013). A taxometric analysis of problem gambling data from a South African national urban sample. Journal of Gambling Studies, 29, 377–392.CrossRefPubMed
Kokotailo, P. K., Egan, J., Gangnon, R., Brown, D., Mundt, M., & Fleming, M. (2004). Validity of the alcohol use disorders identification test in college students. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 28, 914–920.CrossRefPubMed
Lesieur, H. R., & Blume, S. B. (1993). Revising the South Oaks Gambling Screen in different settings. Journal of Gambling Studies, 9, 213–223.CrossRef
Lind, P. A., Zhu, G., Montgomery, G. W., Madden, P. A. F., Heath, A. C., Martin, N. G., et al. (2013). Genome-wide association study of a quantitative disordered gambling trait. Addiction Biology, 18, 511–522.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Linnet, J., Moller, A., Peterson, E., Gjedde, A., & Doudet, D. (2011). Inverse association between dopaminergic neurotransmission and Iowa Gambling Task performance in pathological gamblers and healthy controls. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 52, 28–34.CrossRefPubMed
Linnet, J., Peterson, E., Doudet, D. J., Gjedde, A., & Moller, A. (2010). Dopamine release in ventral striatum of pathological gamblers losing money. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 122, 326–333.CrossRefPubMed
Lobo, D. S. S., & Kennedy, J. L. (2009). Genetic aspects of pathological gambling: A complex disorder with shared genetic vulnerabilities. Addiction, 104, 1454–1465.CrossRefPubMed
Mannisto, P. T., & Kaakkola, S. (1999). Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT): Biochemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, and clinical efficacy of the new selective COMT inhibitors. Pharmacological Reviews, 51, 593–628.PubMed
Munafo, M. R., Freathy, R. M., Ring, S. M., St Pourcain, B., & Smith, G. D. (2011). Association of COMT Val108/158Met genotype and cigarette smoking in pregnant women. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 13, 55–63.CrossRef
Olfson, E., & Bierut, L. J. (2012). Convergence of genome-wide association and candidate gene studies for alcoholism. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 36, 2086–2094.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Reid, M. C., Fiellin, D. A., & O’Connor, P. G. (1999). Hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption in primary care. Archives of Internal Medicine, 159, 1681–1689.CrossRefPubMed
Robinson, T. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2008). The incentive sensitization theory of addiction: Some current issues. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 3137–3146.CrossRef
Rodriguez, S., Gaunt, T. R., & Day, I. N. M. (2009). Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium testing of biological ascertainment for Mendelian randomization studies. American Journal of Epidemiology, 169, 505–514.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Schellekens, A. F. A., Franke, B., Ellenbrock, B., Cools, A., de Jong, C. A. J., Buitelaar, J. K., et al. (2012). Reduced dopamine receptor sensitivity as an intermediate phenotype in alcohol dependence and the role of the COMT Val158Met and DRD2 Taq1A genotypes. Archives of General Psychiatry, 69, 339–348.CrossRefPubMed
Selzer, M. L., Vinokur, A., & van Rooijen, L. (1975). A self-administered Short Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (SMAST). Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 36, 117–126.CrossRefPubMed
Singer, B. F., Scott-Railton, J., & Vezina, P. (2012). Unpredictable saccharin reinforcement enhances locomotor responding to amphetamine. Behavioural Brain Research, 226, 340–344.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Steeves, T. D. L., Miyasaki, J., Zurowski, M., Lang, A. E., Pellecchia, G., van Eimeren, T., et al. (2009). Increased striatal dopamine release in Parkinsonian patients with pathological gambling: A [11C] raclopride PET study. Brain, 132, 1376–1385.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Tiihonen, J., Hallikainen, T., Lachman, H., Saito, T., Volavka, J., Kauhanen, J., et al. (1999). Association between the functional variant of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene and type 1 alcoholism. Molecular Psychiatry, 4, 286–289.CrossRefPubMed
Truett, G. E., Heeger, P., Mynatt, R. L., Truett, A. A., Walker, J. A., & Warman, M. L. (2000). Preparation of PCR-quality mouse genomic DNA with hot sodium hydroxide and tris (HotSHOT). BioTechniques, 29, 52–54.PubMed
Urban, N. B. L., Kegeles, L. S., Slifstein, M., Xu, X., Martinez, D., Sakr, E., et al. (2010). Sex differences in striatal dopamine release in young adults after oral alcohol challenge: A positron emission tomography imaging study with [11C]raclopride. Biological Psychiatry, 68, 689–696.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
van den Bos, R., Homberg, J., Gijsbers, E., den Heijer, E., & Cuppen, E. (2009). The effect of COMT Val158 Met genotype on decision-making and preliminary findings on its interaction with the 5-HTTLPR in healthy females. Neuropharmacology, 56, 493–498.CrossRefPubMed
Vandenbergh, D. J., Rodriguez, L. A., Miller, I. T., Uhl, G. R., & Lachman, H. M. (1997). High-activity catechol-O-methyltransferase allele is more prevalent in polysubstance abusers. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 74, 439–442.CrossRefPubMed
Voon, V., Reynolds, B., Brezing, C., Gallea, C., Skaljic, M., Ekanayake, V., et al. (2010). Impulsive choice and response dopamine agonist-related impulse control behaviors. Psychopharmacology, 207, 645–659.CrossRefPubMedCentralPubMed
Wang, T., Franke, P., Neidt, H., Cichon, S., Knapp, M., Lichtermann, D., et al. (2001). Association study of the low-activity allele of catechol-O-methyltransferase and alcoholism using a family-based approach. Molecular Psychiatry, 6, 109–111.CrossRefPubMed
Weintraub, D., Koester, J., Potenza, M. N., Siderowf, A. D., Stacy, M., Voon, V., et al. (2010). Impulse control disorders in Parkinson disease: A cross-sectional study of 3090 patients. Archives of Neurology, 67, 589–595.CrossRefPubMed
Zack, M., & Poulos, C. X. (2004). Amphetamine primes motivation to gamble and gambling-related semantic networks in problem gamblers. Neuropsychopharmacology, 29, 195–207.CrossRefPubMed
Metadata
Title
COMT Associations with Disordered Gambling and Drinking Measures
Authors
Casey R. Guillot
Jennifer R. Fanning
Tiebing Liang
Mitchell E. Berman
Publication date
01-06-2015
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of Gambling Studies / Issue 2/2015
Electronic ISSN: 1573-3602
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-013-9434-1

Other articles of this Issue 2/2015

Journal of Gambling Studies 2/2015 Go to the issue

Original Paper

Modern Multi-line Slot Machine Games: The Effect of Lines Wagered on Winners, Losers, Bonuses, and Losses Disguised as Wins

Original Paper

Health Behaviour and Body Mass Index Among Problem Gamblers: Results from a Nationwide Survey

Original Paper

A Trade Based View on Casino Taxation: Market Conditions

Original Paper

Effect of Casino-Related Sound, Red Light and Pairs on Decision-Making During the Iowa Gambling Task

Original Paper

Clinical and Personality Characteristics Associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Problem and Pathological Gamblers Recruited from the Community

Original Paper

Problem Gambling and Homelessness: Results from an Epidemiologic Study