Previous studies of nAChR genes have examined alcohol phenotypes including age of initiation, DSM-IV alcoholism diagnosis, maximum number of drinks when drinking the most and subjective effects to early alcohol exposure (Ehringer et al., 2007; Johnson et al., 2006; Schlaepfer et al., 2008a; Wang et al., 2008; Zeiger et al., 2008; Zhu et al., 2005). Three of these studies focused on populations of young adults (Ehringer et al., 2007; Schlaepfer et al., 2008a; Zeiger et al., 2008). Ehringer et al. found an association between early subjective effects of alcohol and SNPs in the CHRNB2 gene, and Schlaepfer et al. found association between age of initiation of alcohol use and SNPs in CHRNA3 and CHRNB4 in two separate samples. However, no evidence for linkage or association has been observed between alcohol abuse and dependence related symptoms and nAChRs. To our knowledge, only the COGA studies have examined nAChR genes and adult alcoholism, and only the CHRNA5 gene has been associated with alcohol dependence (Johnson et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2008; Zhu et al., 2005). Here we used FBAT-PC to combine
