The DNA was extracted from peripheral blood using a kit from Qiagen Inc. (Valencia, CA). On the basis of the GWAS results from the discovery sample, 12 SNPs were selected for testing in the replication samples. All SNPs were genotyped using the TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assay in a 384-well microplate format (Applied Biosystems, Foster, CA). Briefly, 15 ng of DNA was amplified in a total volume of 7 μl containing an MGB probe and 2.5 μl of TaqMan universal PCR master mix. Allelic discrimination analysis was performed on the ABI Prism 7900HT Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems, Foster CA). To ensure the quality of the genotyping, SNP-specific control samples were added to each 384-well plate.
