In summary, we present here the first GWAS of AD-CrC, MAXDRINKS, and flushing in a Thai population, confirm a strong relationship between all of these traits and ALDH2, and supply the first findings of pleiotropy between flushing and major depression (and nominally between major depression and alcohol consumption phenotypes) in an Asian population. Prior studies in other, much larger, samples, in different populations, have shown association not only with alcohol metabolizing genes, but with variants mapping elsewhere as well (Gelernter et al., 2014, Clarke et al., 2017, Schumann et al., 2016, Jorgenson et al., 2017). That we identified strong evidence for association only at and near ALDH2, most likely reflects the limited sample size available to us. When larger Asian samples characterized for AD are available, it is a strong expectation that additional risk loci will be identified. Likewise, the limited pleiotropy results reflect both the sample size limitation in the present study, and the lack of other GWAS in Asian populations for comparison purposes.
