Binge drinking is a relatively common pattern of alcohol use among youth with normative frequency trajectories peaking in emerging and early adulthood. Frequent binge drinking is a critical risk factor for not only the development of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) but also increased odds of alcohol-related injury and death, and thus constitutes a significant public health concern. Changes in binge drinking across development are strongly associated with changes in impulsive personality traits (IPTs) which have been hypothesized as intermediate phenotypes associated with genetic risk for heavy alcohol use and AUD. The current study sought to examine the extent to which longitudinal changes in binge drinking and intoxication frequency across adolescence and early adulthood are associated with genetic influences underlying dual-systems IPTs (i.e., top-down [lack of self-control] and bottom-up [sensation seeking and urgency] constructs) alongside genetic risk for alcohol consumption and AUD. Associations were tested using conditional latent growth curve polygenic score (PGS) models in three independent longitudinal samples (N=10,554). Results suggested consistent significant and independent associations across all samples between sensation seeking PGSs and model intercepts (i.e., higher frequency of binge drinking at first measurement occasion) and alcohol consumption PGSs and model slopes (i.e., steeper increases toward peak binge drinking frequency). Urgency PGSs were not significantly associated with changes in binge drinking or intoxication frequency. Collectively, these findings highlight the role of unique but correlated IPT and alcohol-specific genetic factors in the emergence and escalation of binge drinking behaviors during adolescence and early adulthood.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Grants F31AA027957 (principal investigator: Alex P. Miller), K01AA031724 (principal investigator: Alex P. Miller), F31AA029948 (principal investigator: Kellyn M. Spychala), R01AA013967 (principal investigator: Kim Fromme), and R01AA020637 (principal investigator: Kim Fromme); the National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant T32DA015035 (principal investigators: Kathleen K. Bucholz and Jeremy T. Goldbach); and a Center of Excellence award from the International Center for Responsible Gaming (principal investigator: Wendy S. Slutske).

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The Institutional Review Board at the University of Missouri gave ethical approval for this work.

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The full GWAS summary statistics for the 23andMe discovery data set will be made available through 23andMe to qualified researchers under an agreement with 23andMe that protects the privacy of the 23andMe participants. Please visit https://research.23andme.com/collaborate/#dataset-access/ for more information and to apply to access the data. GWAS summary statistics for risk taking in the UKB cohort along with ten smaller replication samples were obtained from https://thessgac.com/. GWAS summary statistics for drinks per week were obtained from https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/ 11299/201564. Meta-analytic GWAS summary statistics (AlcGen, CHARGE +, and UKB) for grams of alcohol consumed per day were obtained through author request and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute website (http:// ftp.ebi.ac.uk/). PGC alcohol dependence and UKB GWAS summary statistics for AUDIT-C were obtained from the PGC website (https://www.med.unc.edu/pgc/). Million Veteran Program GWAS summary statistics were obtained through the Database for Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP; Study Accession: phs001672). Finn- GenR6 ICD-based AUD GWAS data were obtained from https://r6. finngen.fi/pheno/AUD. For more information, visit https://finngen. gitbook.io/documentation/. Information on how to obtain Add Health data is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). The ALSPAC website contains details of all data that are available through a fully searchable data dictionary and variable search tool (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/).