The SAGE dataset contains half of the most commonly reported variants associated with the ten most well studied candidate genes (Table 2). Of the 5 candidate variants reported in SAGE, the only variant with a p< .05 is rs279858 in GABRA2 (p=.0052, OR=1.16). The commonly reported variants, rs1800497 in DRD2, rs698 in ADH1C, rs1799971 in OPRM1 and rs4680 in COMT, have p> .05. The minor allele for rs17999971 in OPRM1 trends towards being protective (OR=.88) while the minor alleles of rs1800497 in DRD2, rs698 in ADH1C and rs4680 in COMT trend toward being associated with alcohol dependence (OR=1.11,1.08,1.02 respectively). The effects of these associations are in the expected direction based on previous candidate gene studies (Blum et al., 1990; Bond et al., 1998; Hendershot et al., 2011; Ponce et al., 2008; Thomasson et al., 1991; Tiihonen et al., 1999; Tolstrup et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2006). In addition, these effects in SAGE were similar to the findings in the individual three studies that contributed to SAGE: COGA, FSCD and COGEND. Across the three contributing studies, the odds ratios ranged
