The results of our study must nonetheless be viewed in the context of the study’s limitations. Although the instruments that were chosen are used widely to evaluate alcohol-induced subjective effects, the primary outcome measures used in this study were based on participants’ self-report. Subsequent studies of the impact of GABRA2 on behavioral measures of alcohol’s effects in humans should also include physiologic measures that are sensitive to alcohol effects, such as static ataxia, and neuropsychological tests by which changes in cognitive function can also be assessed. Another limitation of the study could be that we included only Japanese subjects; therefore, we should be careful to generalize these findings to other ethnic groups. Despite these limitations, the results of this study suggest an important association between the subjective responses to alcohol and GABRA2 polymorphisms. These findings provide further evidence for the role of GABRA2 in the subjective effects of alcohol and in the development of alcohol use disorders.
