To comprehensively assess the influence of common genetic variation on circulating adiponectin levels, we undertook a large-scale meta-analysis of 3 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for circulating adiponectin levels from population-based cohorts (n = 8,531 participants). From this first stage, we chose SNPs most strongly associated with adiponectin levels (P<10−4, n = 250), and tested these for their association with adiponectin in 5 additional population-based cohorts (n = 6,202). The 5 SNPs which achieved genome-wide significance in the combined stage were then tested for their association with: type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) in the Diabetes Genetics Replication And Meta-analysis (DIAGRAM) consortium [15] (n = 10,128); indices of insulin resistance in the Meta-Analysis of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium (MAGIC) [16] (n = 24,188); risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in a consortium of 8 cohorts with available genome-wide association data (n = 22,421); and body mass index (BMI) in the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) consortium (Text S1) [17],[18] (n = 32,527) (Figure 1).
