Within GIANT, we previously identified 32 loci associated with BMI.4 There is considerable overlap of samples with the current study, so it is not unexpected that we observed that the effects of all established BMI loci were directionally consistent between the prior study of overall BMI and the obesity-related traits in the present study (Supplementary Table 9). Twenty-seven out of 32 SNPs were significantly associated with the tails of BMI (P<0.0016, Bonferroni-corrected). Although only half of the SNPs were significantly associated with obesity class 3, presumably due to the smaller sample size and reduced power, the majority of SNPs were significantly associated with obesity class 2 and all with obesity class 1 and overweight.
