BACKGROUND: Alcohol abuse is associated with sleep problems, which are often linked to circadian rhythm disturbances. Previous studies have separately examined the effects of mutations in the clock gene PER2 on alcohol consumption and sleep problems. Here we hypothesized that an allelic variation in the PER2 gene is associated with alcohol consumption in interaction with sleep problems among adolescents. METHODS: The Survey of Adolescent Life and Health in Västmanland 2006, a Swedish county, including 1254 students 17-18 years old, was used as a population-representative sample of adolescents. We investigated the PER2 Single Nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) 10870 (A/G) in the cohort together with an assessment of alcohol consumption according to the AUDIT-C questionnaire, and sleep problems using a survey consisting of 18 items. Furthermore, we carried out an exploratory analysis on the PER2 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism 10870 polymorphism in a group of severely alcoholic females. RESULTS: We found a significant association of the SNP 10870 in adolescent boys, where the genotype AA, in the presence of several and frequent sleep problems, was associated with increased alcohol consumption. Among adolescent girls, only sleep problems were related to alcohol consumption. A non-significant trend was observed among the severely alcoholic females, with the G allele being over-represented in the severely alcoholic females group in comparision to the control females. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that PER2 gene variation is associated with alcohol consumption in interaction with sleep problems among Swedish adolescent boys.

OBJECTIVE

 The aim of this study was to investigate the congruence of biomarkers, questionnaires, and interviews as instruments to assess adolescent alcohol consumption.

METHOD

 The methodology used was a cross-sectional study with a randomized sample. Four different methods were used to estimate high adolescent alcohol consumption. The concordance of the results was investigated. Surveys were performed, and biological specimens were collected at all schools in the county of Västmanland, Sweden, in 2001. Eighty-one boys and 119 girls from a population of 16- and 19-year-old adolescents were randomly selected from quartiles of volunteers representing various degrees of psychosocial risk behaviors. Using a questionnaire (for a 1-hour session) and in-depth interviews, subjects were assessed regarding their alcohol-use habits. Blood and hair samples were analyzed for phosphatidylethanol (PEth) and fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs), respectively.

RESULTS

 High alcohol consumption was underreported in the questionnaire compared with the interviews. PEth and FAEE analyses weakly confirmed the self-reports, and the results of the two biochemical tests did not overlap. The PEth blood test was the most specific but the least sensitive, whereas the FAEE hair test revealed low specificity and an overrepresentation of positive results in girls.

CONCLUSIONS

The expected higher self-report of high alcohol consumption by interview rather than by questionnaire was confirmed partly because of the influence of a bogus pipeline procedure. The absence of overlap between PEth and FAEE results and their poor agreement with self-reports suggested that biomarkers are unsuitable as screening tools for alcohol consumption in adolescents.