In the current study, we assayed a sample collection of obese case subjects and never-overweight control subjects and found strong support that large and rare CNVs contribute to obesity. Collectively, the OR for large CNVs observed in our study is higher than common SNPs identified in GWASs (for example, the OR for FTO is 1.3 [3] and for MC4R in severe childhood obesity is 1.3 [4]), suggesting that rare CNVs may represent more penetrant risk factors for obesity.
