In order to increase sample size and study power, we used both healthy subjects and subjects with T2DM or T2DM–ESRD. As obesity is a risk factor of diabetes, it is unclear if the presence of T2DM or ESRD will in turn influence the genetic effect on adiposity measures. Some of the earlier studies on adiposity have used patients with various metabolic diseases (for example, T2DM, coronary artery disease, hypertension) as part of the gene discovery cohorts to increase study power and did not show strong heterogeneity of effect size between the healthy subjects and the patients.16,17 In the present study, the effect sizes were comparable in non-diabetic, T2DM-ESRD and T2DM subjects in the meta-analysis, suggesting that the presence of disease has minimal effect on the genetic associations.
