We focused on 10,317 trait-associated SNPs (GWAS P≤5×10−8; Methods, Supplementary Table 3) and identified 59,786 trans-eQTLs (SNP-gene distance >5 Mb; P<8.3×10−6, corresponding to an FDR<0.05; Supplementary Data 2, Extended Data Figure 2), representing 3,853 SNPs (37% of tested GWAS SNPs) and 6,298 genes (32% of tested genes; Figure 1c). The largest previous trans-eQTL meta-analysis in blood5 (N=5,311) identified trans-eQTLs for 8% of the tested SNPs, indicating that a larger sample size is beneficial for the identification of distal effects. Similar to cis-eQTLs, highly expressed genes without detectable trans-eQTL effects were more likely to be intolerant to loss-of-function variants (two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test, P=6.4×10−7; Figure 2b), suggesting constrained expression of these genes.
