The NEGR1 gene is located on chromosome 1p31 and is involved in the regulation of neurite outgrowth in the developing brain.41,42 In the NEGR1 region, the three most significantly associated SNPs from our study (rs9424977, rs3101336 and rs2568958) are located in the same LD block with variable correlations (D’ = 0.82–1, r2 0.35–0.99). In, European-derived populations, the LD pattern of these SNPs is similar to that observed in our samples, and the reported effect sizes are between 0.025 and 0.038 s.d. unit of BMI. The effect sizes of meta-analysis results in our African-American cohorts were substantially larger (0.05-0.06 s.d. unit of BMI). The direction of association is the same between the two populations (Supplementary Table 4).
