The cohort-study methods papers provide detail about many of the phenotypes listed in Table 2. For CHD, investigators knowledgeable about the phenotype in each study decided to focus on fatal and non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) as the primary outcome because the MI criteria differed in only trivial ways among the studies. There were some minor differences in the definition of the composite outcome of MI, fatal CHD, and sudden death, which became the secondary outcome. Only subjects at risk for an incident event were included in the analysis. MI survivors whose DNA was drawn after the event were not eligible. The primary analysis was restricted to Europeans or European Americans. Patients entered the analysis at the time of the DNA blood draw, and were followed until an event, death, loss to follow up, or the last visit. The main recommendations of the Analysis Committee were adopted, and a threshold of 5 × 10−8 was selected for genome-wide statistical significance. Analyses in progress include about 1700 MIs and 2300 CHD events among about 29,000 eligible patients. Each cohort conducted its own
