We performed genome wide association analyses for seven related smoking behaviors in two datasets totaling 4,611 individuals and 2617 ever smokers. We selected smoking behaviors with established hereditary components [4], [5], [21], [63] and public health relevance[64], [65]. To the best of our knowledge this study represents the first genome-wide association study of duration of smoking, pack years, and age at initiation of smoking. The sample size is also larger than most published candidate gene association studies of smoking behavior [66] and two previous genome-wide association studies of smoking behaviors [45], [59].
