The first sample set included European Americans of different regional European origins (952 individuals), Italian (6 individuals), and Spanish (14 individuals) individuals. The European American sample set included 894 self identified European American individuals that were recruited as part of the New York Cancer Project (NYCP); a prospective longitudinal study [34]. The European American group also included 38 individuals of Jewish ancestry for which both the country of origin and the Jewish ethnic information for each grandparent were available for each of these individuals. The Italian and Spanish individuals were as previously described [6]. For the European Americans at least partial grandparental information was available for majority of the individuals.
