The exploration of relationships between smoking status and early smoking experiences in the African American sample is inconclusive due to the small number of participants available. The following general observations can be made: in statistical contrasts of race and smoking status in regular smokers (cases) and controls (never-smokers), reports of relaxation during early experimentation with cigarettes were significantly greater in African Americans. Limiting the analysis to regular smokers provided even stronger support for the possibility that African Americans may be more reactive to initial cigarettes than Caucasians (manuscript in preparation). The fact that allele frequencies for the risk polymorphism (rs16969968) were substantially lower in the African American sample, however, makes it unlikely that this particular polymorphism can account for differences between African Americans and Caucasians in initial sensitivity to cigarettes, but the possibility that other nicotine receptor subunits (e.g. beta-2, beta-3 or alpha-6) are involved merits consideration. Systematic exploration of race differences in susceptibility to smoking in larger samples has the potential to contribute important new insights about nicotine dependence etiology.
