COGA recruited subjects in Hartford, Connecticut; Indianapolis, Indiana; Iowa City, Iowa; New York City, New York; San Diego, California; St Louis, Missouri; and Washington, DC. For inclusion in SAGE, cases had to meet lifetime criteria for DSM-IV alcohol dependence, the majority of cases were recruited from alcoholism treatment centers. Control subjects, were both biologically unrelated to cases, and had consumed alcohol but never experienced any significant alcohol or drug-related problems, according to the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism (SSAGA) [18]. The COGA sample utilized in this study consisted of family GWAS data from 2102 European-Americans [14]. De-identified data from the Collaborative Studies on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) were used. All participants in COGA provided written informed consent for genetic studies and agreed to share their DNA and phenotypic information for research purposes. The Washington University Human Research Protection Office granted approval for data to be used for this study.
