The data provided by the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) for Genetic Analysis Workshop 14 (GAW14) includes the "maximum number of drinks consumed in a 24-hour period." This phenotype is closely related to alcoholism diagnosis, and a previous genome screen of this phenotype in COGA resulted in evidence for linkage to chromosome 4 in the vicinity of the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) gene cluster [1]. The GAW14 dataset provides nearly 16,000 genotyped single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) that were not available in the original COGA data. For this report we have analyzed these additional genotypic data to see whether the original linkage findings can be confirmed or extended. Linkage signals were followed up with association analysis to make use of the density of the SNP data to refine linkage signals and potentially localize genetic variants that may influence alcohol consumption.
