We used the ARIC study to examine the genetic association with age of cessation in a non-treatment setting. ARIC is a prospective epidemiologic study conducted in four U.S. communities to investigate atherosclerosis. In 1987, each ARIC field center recruited a cohort sample aged 45-64 from a defined population in their community, and almost 16,000 subjects participated. Self-reported age of cessation was assessed with the question “How old were you when you stopped smoking?” Genotyping was performed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on the Affymetrix 6.0 chip. Genetic and phenotype data are available on 12,771 subjects; data were obtained from the NCBI database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gap).
