ADH1B, and it also encodes an enzyme with an increased rate of ethanol oxidation8. The allele encoding Cys370 is common in AA, but rare in other populations8. Our results clearly show that these two different functional SNPs in ADH1B both affect risk for alcoholism, with their relative importance dependent upon allele frequency in the population studied. There is a suggestion of additional independent effects in the chromosome 4 region, but larger studies will be needed to evaluate this.
