minor allele associated with lower alcohol consumption. However, rs35081954 is a common insertion/deletion polymorphism with a MAF of 0.42. Two hits were identified on chromosome 4p14 in the KLB gene that was previously associated with alcohol consumption in a large GWAS of >105 000 Europeans.15 Conditional SNP analyses suggested these two SNPs were not completely independent and identified rs11940694 as the lead SNP associated with alcohol consumption (Supplementary Table 1). Novel hits included a SNP on chromosome 2p23.3 in the GCKR gene. The SNPs in KLB and GCKR were the most strongly associated common (MAF >5%) SNPs with MAFs of >0.28. Regional association plots for the common SNPs in KLB and GCKR are shown in Figure 2. Additional novel hits on chromosome 3p12.1 (CADM2) and chromosome 18q22.3 (FAM69C) were also identified (Table 1). Two SNPs in CADM2 were associated at genome-wide significance level but conditional SNP analyses found rs9841829 to be the lead SNP in this region. These loci will be reviewed in greater detail in the discussion. Regional association plots for all SNPs presented in Table 1 are shown in Supplementary Figures 2.
