Moderate genetic correlation between AUD and alcohol consumption and pervasive pleiotropic effects of SNPs were demonstrated previously [2–4]. Some of the novel variants (10 of 19) identified in this study were also associated with other alcohol-related traits, including AUDIT-C score [3], total AUDIT score [4], and drinks per week (DrnkWk) from the GSCAN (GWAS & Sequencing Consortium of Alcohol and Nicotine use) study [9] (described below and in Supplementary Table 3). Rs1402398, close to VRK2, was associated with AUDIT-C score (tagged by rs2683616) [3]; rs492602 in FUT2 was associated with DrnkWk [9] and total AUDIT score [4]; and rs6421482, rs62250713, rs2533200, rs10717830, rs1783835, rs12296477, rs61974485, and rs72768626 were associated with DrnkWk directly or through tag SNPs in high linkage disequilibrium (LD) [9]. Analysis conditioned on DrnkWk shows that 11 of the 29 independent variants were independently associated with PAU (i.e., not mediated by DrnkWk) (Supplementary Table 3).
