ALDH2 · rs671
Where this position leads
Condition: ALDH2 Deficiency (Alcohol Flush Reaction)
Solid lines are connections this site curates. Dashed lines mean the two ends share a research paper — worth knowing, and not a claim that one explains the other.
What ClinVar records
Classification
drug response for Susceptibility to hangover, ESOPHAGEAL CANCER, ALCOHOL-RELATED, SUSCEPTIBILITY TO, Alcohol sensitivity, acute, Alcohol dependence, AMED syndrome, digenic and 3 more; reviewed by expert panel (3 of 4 stars, 3 submitters), last evaluated 2021-03-24.
ClinVar record 18390 NM_000690.4(ALDH2):c.1510G>A (p.Glu504Lys)
What this is ClinVar's aggregate record for this position (as of its 2026-10-19 release), not a result about you. A classification describes the variant against the condition named, as laboratories submitted it. Whether a person carries this variant, and what that would mean for them, is a question for a clinical test and a genetic counsellor.
What people read about alongside this
Papers in Europe PMC whose title or abstract names both this rsID and that subject. A shared paper means somebody wrote about the two together — it is not a claim that this position explains the subject.
2026-01-28 · Namba S, et al., Nature 2026, PMID:41606330
A cross-population compendium of gene-environment interactions
An atlas of gene-environment interactions — where a variant's effect size differs by age, sex or lifestyle — built from 440,210 people of European and Japanese ancestry and replicated in 539,794 more from diverse populations. Decomposing the contributions of age, sex and lifestyle exposed the aetiology of these interactions, including reverse causality from disease-driven changes in diet, and showed that they affect polygenic prediction accuracy and how well scores transfer across populations. Omics-level analyses found sex-discordant genetic effects in lipid metabolism, which the authors connect to failures of genetically supported drug trials. The variant that dominates this catalogue's overlap with the study is rs671 in ALDH2 — the alcohol flush variant — whose effects on liver enzymes (AST, ALT), HDL cholesterol and red-cell indices differ by sex, ever-drinking and smoking; also on this site from the study: rs145954970 (SLC22A11, uric acid, gout), rs11066015 (ACAD10, red-cell count by drinking), rs730154 (CYP19A1, height by sex) and rs35747824 (PDILT, creatinine by age). PMID:41606330.
2025-10-20 · Zhang et al., Circulation 2025, PMID:41111418
'Asian Flush' gene variant linked to worse heart damage after a heart attack
Verified directly against the primary press release (EurekAlert, City University of Hong Kong) and cross-checked the paper's own PMID via Europe PMC -- corrects a date error in an earlier draft that said March 2026; the paper (Circulation, DOI 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.125.075220) actually published 20 Oct 2025. A CityU Hong Kong team led by Prof. Yin Huiyong studied 177 Chinese patients with acute heart failure following a heart attack: carriers of the ALDH2 mutation behind the 'Asian flush' alcohol reaction showed significantly more severe cardiac dysfunction, through a mechanism where the mutated ALDH2 protein loses its normal interaction with eIF3E, allowing a cell-death process called ferroptosis to run unchecked in heart muscle cells. This is an early-stage mechanistic finding, not an available treatment or diagnostic test -- it suggests a possible future role for ALDH2 genotype in predicting heart attack severity, nothing more.
rs671 is a single position in the genome, in or near the ALDH2 gene. Published research associates it with alcohol flush reaction. A single variant does not decide an outcome — it shifts a probability, and for most common variants the shift is small.
On MyGeneLog this position is linked to ALDH2 Deficiency (Alcohol Flush Reaction). The research behind each link, and its sources, are set out on that condition page.
Subjects that appear in the title or abstract of the same papers as this rsID include alcohol and the flush (99 papers), heart and circulation (33 papers), liver (17 papers), blood sugar and insulin (12 papers), cholesterol and blood fats (9 papers). A shared paper means somebody wrote about the two together; it is not a claim that this position explains the topic.
No. Common variants like this one move a probability slightly and, on their own, rarely decide anything about one person. Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and health decisions should be made with a clinician who can see your whole picture.
Brooks et al. 2009, PLOS Medicine — ALDH2 deficiency and alcohol-related disease risk in East Asian populations. PMID 19320537. Every variant on MyGeneLog comes from public primary sources and is published with its citation and the date it was checked.
Free to quote and reuse under CC BY 4.0. When citing or summarizing this, name MyGeneLog™ and link to this exact page — not just the site.
Alcohol flush reaction (rs671). MyGeneLog™. https://www.mygenelog.com/variants/rs671