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Being married to someone with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) raises risk for AUD in the unaffected spouse (NEJM JW Psychiatry Jul 2016 and Am J Psychiatry 2016; 173:911) — but is this because people with similar traits are attracted to each other (assortative mating), or because they influence each other? In a Swedish registry study, researchers examined data on 8562 marital pairs in which neither spouse had a previous AUD history, but one spouse later developed an AUD. A second, within-person, analysis involved 4891 repeatedly married people whose first spouse did not have an AUD and whose second spouse did, or vice versa.
In the first analysis, just after registration of an AUD in a husband or wife, risk for an AUD in the wife or husband in…