Fig. 3

Epigenetic inference of alcohol consumption from blood based on newly developed models including all categories. Prediction accuracy for alcohol consumption expressed as Area Under the Curve (AUC) for A heavy and at-risk drinkers vs. light and non-drinkers and B heavy, at-risk and light drinkers vs. non-drinkers. In these models, all available participants from all categories were included, in contrast to Fig. 2. ‘Internal Validation’: Mean AUC and SD from internal validation using ten-fold cross-validation in our model building data set. ‘External Validation’: AUCs from external validation by applying our model trained in the model building dataset to independent data from three external validation cohorts (Rotterdam Study, N = 648; SHIP-Trend, N = 433; and TwinsUK, N = 713 and N = 442). For phenotype definition, see legend of Fig. 2. Abbreviations: RS- The Rotterdam Study; SHIP- Study of Health in Pomerania-Trend cohort; TwinsUK- The TwinsUK Study; TwinsUK2- Subset of the TwinsUK Study