Europeans, and its absence from arrays used in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), effects in people of European descent have, until recently, been hard to establish. A recent study demonstrated that ADH1B*48His has a similar effect on risk for alcoholism in Europeans as it does in Asians, with an odds ratio of 0.34 (p=6.6x10-10)32. ADH1B*370Cys is found almost only in populations of Eastern African descent, where as many as half of the individuals can carry the allele; it is rare in populations from Europe or Asia. ADH1B*370Cys also has a protective effect against alcohol dependence38, but those populations are under-studied.
