Despite limitations in respect to sample sizes and statistical power, the current results have revealed significant miRNA activity in these body fat depots. Hence, these results should encourage further studies with larger sample sizes and increased power, necessary to detect additional miRNA eQTLs in adipose tissue, as well as for detecting associations between miRNA eQTLs and relevant obefsity-related phenotypes. The results from the miRNA-mRNA association analysis are also encouraging and highlight the imfportance of performing global profiling of both miRNA and mRNA expression within the same study, in order to determine the extent to which these two molecular phenotypes are associated.
