Our study took an exploratory approach to examine the feasibility of identifying genes influencing alcohol consumption in samples selected for heterogeneous purposes. A number of linkage peaks with LOD scores greater than 2.0, and peaking at 3.3, were found in candidate gene regions for alcohol-related traits. Peaks were found to vary for the same sample when data collected at different time points (with a mean interval of 8 years) were used for a subset of the sample. Further, linkage varied as lighter drinkers were progressively excluded from the dataset being analysed. Thus, plausible linkage for alcohol consumption can be identified in samples selected for heterogeneous purposes, but sample characteristics can have a substantial influence on the strength of the finding.
