We also tested the 14 WHR-associated SNPs for their effect on BMI using data from up to 242,530 participants available from the GIANT consortium (including most of the studies available for WHR association). Of the 14 WHR loci, four (near TBX15-WARS2, CPEB4, LYPLAL1 and GRB14) also showed evidence of association with BMI (4.1 × 10−3 ≤ P ≤ 3.2×10−6) with the WHR-increasing allele associated with decreased BMI (Supplementary Table 3). When adding an interaction term of SNP and BMI into the model, we observed that BMI modified the WHR association at the LY86 locus (P for interaction = 9.5 × 10−5) with a larger WHR effect among the obese compared to the non-obese (see Supplementary Note).
