The ideal end goal of many of these human molecular genetic studies is to inform future pharmacogenetic studies of the role of certain polymorphisms in genetically influenced disorders. While it is likely to take time for these approaches to be implemented in clinical practice, molecular genetic studies serve to identify possible targets for novel treatments. Although our findings provide limited evidence for a role of GABRA2 in CD and AD, GABRA2 is also a likely candidate for disorders such as anxiety, general substance abuse, depression, and schizophrenia (Engin et al. 2012). For example, a recent haplotype analysis of rs9291283, the SNP with which we found the strongest evidence of association with CD in the GADD sample, revealed a significant association with cocaine addiction, and it has been postulated that rs894269, a SNP in high LD with rs9291283, lies in a cis-enhancer region of the gene. Future studies examining the possible function of rs894269 should be pursued in order to examine whether it may represent the underlying causal variant contributing the association seen with its correlates, including rs9291283 (Dixon et al. 2010).
