(Table S1) have previously been reported to be associated with adipose tissue development, obesity, T2D and metabolic disturbances [12], [13], [15], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32]. Of these, nine miRNAs (hsa-miR-326 [21] , hsa-miR-211 [22] , [23] , hsa-miR-10b [32] , hsa-miR-365 [32] , hsa-miR-10a [32] , hsa-miR-503 [32] , hsa-miR-335* [30] , hsa-miR-331-3p [30] and has-miR-199a-5p [30]) were expressed at higher levels in abdominal, rather than gluteal, adipose tissue (Table S1). To confirm that miRNAs with tissue-differential expression did not have substantial metabolic syndrome case- or control group specific variability, the analysis was also carried out separately in each one of the case- and control groups and compared to the joint analysis. Results indicate a high degree of concordance between the joint analysis and analysis in case- and control groups separately (correlations of 0.93 and 0.98 were observed between the effect size estimates in the joint analysis and the separate analyses in case- and control groups respectively (Figure S1)).
