Analysis of principal component based quantitative phenotypes for alcoholism

Principal component analysis was used to construct quantitative phenotypes for alcoholism. These were analyzed for linkage to genomic regions with a variance components approach. The four phenotypes considered were a factor describing medical symptoms of alcohol dependency, a factor describing a psychological profile correlated with susceptibility to alcoholism, monoamine oxidase B (MAOB) activity and an average measurement of the P3 component of event-related potentials (ERP) at the Fp electrode placements. One region (around marker GATA123C09 on chromosome 3) with suggestive evidence for linkage was detected for the P3 (Fp) measurement. For three of the four distinct phenotypes, modest evidence for linkage to a similar region (around marker ADH3 on chromosome 4) was found.