A recent study examining the association between polymorphisms in vesicular glutamate transporters and severe alcoholism in a female Swedish cohort indicated a nominally significant association with Slc17a6-rs2290045.194 A study evaluating associations between alcohol dependence and GAD genes (Gad1 and Gad2), the enzyme responsible for conversion of glutamate to GABA, in a subset of the Irish Affected Sib Pair Study of Alcohol Dependence sample reported that two polymorphisms in Gad1 were associated with initial sensitivity to alcohol and a different polymorphism in Gad1 was associated with age at alcohol dependence onset.195 An analysis of the relationship between Gad1 variants and alcohol dependence in an Italian cohort revealed that the Gad1-rs11542313 polymorphism was significant.196 An earlier study evaluating polymorphisms of Gad2 indicated that the functional promoter Gad2-243A>G variant was significantly associated with alcohol dependence in Russian but not European American males.197 A contemporary study found that three polymorphisms of Gad1, but no polymorphisms of Gad2, were significantly associated with alcohol dependence in Han Taiwanese men.198 In a recent genome-wide DNA methylation study, it was reported that methylation of Gad1 is significantly associated
