Our meta-analysis of seven MDD and major depression cohorts identified 44 independent loci that were statistically significant (P<5×10−8), statistically independent of any other signal26, and supported by multiple SNPs. This number supports our prediction that GWA discovery in major depression would require about five times more cases than for schizophrenia (lifetime risk ~1% and h2~0.8) to achieve approximately similar power27. Of these 44 loci, 30 are novel and 14 were significant in a prior study of MDD or depressive symptoms. The overlap of our findings with prior reports were: 1/1 with CHARGE depressive symptom14, 1/2 overlap with SSGAC depressive symptom16, and 12/15 overlap with Hyde et al.28 ). There are few trans-ancestry comparisons for major depression so we contrasted these European results with the Han Chinese CONVERGE study15 (Supplementary Note). The loci identified in CONVERGE are uncommon in Europeans (rs12415800 0.45 vs 0.02 and rs35936514 0.28 vs 0.06) and were, not significant in our analysis.
