Although this is only the second genome-wide association study of AD and related traits in China, several SNPs associated with AD and AD-related traits have been identified by GWAS in European and Japanese populations. SNPs related to AD, maximum or average alcohol consumption, and/or frequency of consumption were selected through the NHGRI Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies (Hindorff et al. 2009) and considered for AD, maximum drinks, and flushing response in the present sample of males. Two previous case-control GWAS of alcohol consumption (“drinkers” vs. “non-drinkers”) have been performed in Chinese or Japanese populations, each identifying an additional SNP associated with drinking behavior within 1MB of ALDH2 - rs10774610 in CCDC63 (Takeuchi et al. 2011) and rs11066280 near C12orf51 (Yang et al. 2013). In both papers, the authors note a lack of independence between these SNPs and rs671.
