In conclusion, we identified 4 loci associated with alcohol consumption at a genome-wide significance level, including ALDH2, ADH1B, KLB, and GCKR. Our results also extend previous findings implicating AUTS2, SGOL1, and SERPINC1 genes in alcohol consumption-related traits in non-Hispanic whites. Our study of 86 627 individuals had 80% power to detect effects of common SNPs (MAF>0.10) of 1.10 on drinker status and a proportion of variance of 0.05% in drinks/week. This suggests that future genetic association studies of alcohol consumption traits will need to include hundreds of thousands if not millions of subjects to identify and confirm the small effects of individual SNPs on these phenotypes.
