In the present study, we identified several SNPs showing suggestive association with maxdrinks (p < 5.0 × 10−5) in the COGA or the SAGE datasets, but no SNP met the threshold for genome-wide significance. The strongest signals from the COGA GWAS were near a non-coding RNA (LincRNA) on chromosome 13q31.1. These SNPs were not significant in SAGE (0.5 ≤ p ≤ 0.91), but showed the same direction of effect. LincRNAs are usually associated with open chromatin signatures such as histone modification sites. There is some emerging evidence suggesting that lincRNAs regulate gene expression both during normal development and under pathological conditions, including neuropsychiatric disorders (Dudley et al. 2011; Mattick 2009). Out of 479 SNPs (p < 1 × 10−4) identified in the COGA dataset, SNPs near NCAM2 and MPHOSPH6 showed nominal replication in SAGE (p < 0.05), while many other SNPs showed the same direction of effect. In the SAGE GWAS the strongest signal, rs67666182, along with highly correlated SNPs (R2 > 0.8) near FABP5 showed no replication in COGA, while SNPs in LMO1, and near TLR1, TLR10 and A2BP1
