Each of the common height SNPs reported here explains a small fraction of the residual phenotypic variation in height (0.1-0.8%; Supplementary Table 7). When analyzed together, the additive effects of the 12 SNPs with combined P < 5 × 10-7 only contribute 2.0% of the height variation in the FINRISK97 panel, far from the estimated ~80-90% attributable to genetic variation. To assess the cumulative predictive value of this initial set of variants, we created a ‘height score’ by counting the number of height-increasing alleles (12 SNPs; height score 0-24) in each participant with complete genotype for these 12 SNPs in the FINRISK97 panel (n = 7,566). On average, males and females with ≤8 ‘tall’ alleles (4.7% of FINRISK97) are 3.5 cm and 3.6 cm shorter than males and females with ≥16 ‘tall’ alleles (7.1% of FINRISK97), respectively (Fig. 3). Individual effect sizes range from 0.3 cm per T allele for CDK6 rs2040494 to 0.5 cm per C allele for HMGA2 rs1042725 (Table 1).
