Who would have thought that your eye color would have anything to do with your relationship with alcohol?
A new study, which was published in the July issue of American Journal of Medical Genetics: Neuropsychiatric Genetics (Part B), suggests that people with blue eyes are more likely to develop alcohol dependency than those with darker eyes, according to the NY Daily News.
“This suggests an intriguing possibility — that eye color can be useful in the clinic for alcohol dependence diagnosis,” lead author Arvis Sulovari said in a statement.
Geneticists at the University of Vermont reportedly found a genetic relationship between eye color genes and the genes that are associated with alcoholism.
For the recent study, researchers analyzed a genetic database of more than 10,000 northeast Americans diagnosed with at least one psychiatric illness and filtered out European-Americans additionally diagnosed with alcoholism, according to The Huffington Post.
In the recent study, scientists reportedly found that, overall, people with light eyes, such as blue, green and gray, had higher incidences of alcohol dependency than those with brown eyes. However, out of those with light-colored eyes, blue eyes were reportedly most strongly linked to alcoholism.
Although the results of the recent study can be beneficial to future research regarding alcohol dependence, the research team is reportedly unsure whether the correlation is simply genetically driven or if cultural and environmental factors need to be considered as well.
“Right now it’s a question for us— we don’t know what drives this,” stated researcher Dawei Li.
