under life stress (Caspi et al., 2003; Dick et al., 2007). For alcohol dependence, some studies (e.g., Parsian and Cloninger, 2001) have reported association with the long allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, others have found association with the short allele (e.g., Thompson et al., 2000), whereas other studies have found no association with either allele (e.g., Dick et al., 2007; Edenberg et al., 1998). A recent meta-analysis reported that the short allele was significantly associated with alcohol dependence with an odds ratio of 1.18, suggesting a gene of small effect (Feinn et al., 2005). Given the high co-occurrence of depression with alcohol dependence and the influence of stress on both disorders, we speculated a similar moderating effect of CRHR1 genotype on the interaction with depression. We performed additional genetic association tests in the same 1049 subjects with depression (by DSM-IV) only, alcohol dependence and depression, using the same 10 SNPs in the CRHR1 gene we had tested. No significant association (p < 0.05) was found (data not shown). If the clinical diagnosis phenotype tested was “alcohol dependence or depression” (both by DSM-IV criteria), only 4 SNPs that we tested from the CRHR1 gene, rs242924, rs1396862, rs878886, rs878887, resulted in statistical
