These findings indicate the important role of HTR3B polymorphisms in heroin dependence among the Chinese Han population and provide valuable information for further genetic and neurobiological investigations of heroin dependence.
The association of HTR3B SNP rs11606194 with heroin addiction in the European ancestry subgroup remained significant after correction for multiple testing (p(corrected) = 0.04).
In this study, 360 treatment-seeking African American male patients with single and comorbid DSM-IV lifetime diagnoses of alcohol, cocaine and heroin dependence and 187 African American male controls were genotyped for the triallelic 5-HTTLPR functional polymorphism in the 5-HT transporter gene (SLC6A4) and 16 haplotype-tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across HTR3B (including the functional rs1176744Tyr129Ser) and HTR3A, genes encoding 5-HT3 receptors.