In addition, several genes have been identified as associated with childhood ear infection via a genome-wide association study (GWAS), such as FUT2, TBX1, ABO, MKX, FGF3, AUTS2, CDHR3, and PLG (Tian et al., 2017). Among these, FUT2 and TBX1 were associated with OM by separate studies; however, many of these associations did not reach the genome-wide significance threshold (p < 5 × 10−8), therefore their involvement in OM requires further validation. Here, FUT2 is linked to ear infection.