All SNPs that achieved a combined P-value of ≤10−4 in the meta-analysis (n = 250) were tested for their association in the additional cohorts (InCHIANTI, BLSA, ALSPAC and the Framingham Offspring Cohort). Two SNPs that were not near the ADIPOQ locus, and which demonstrated associations of ≤5×10−7 with adiponectin levels in the combined analysis, were further verified in an additional replication cohort (EPIC-Norfolk), where association with adiponectin was tested using a generalized linear model. For the quantitative trait analyses, individuals with known T2D were excluded. For the T2D case-control analyses, each SNP was tested for association using a logistic regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex and BMI. All analyses for the EPIC-Norfolk cohort were performed with SAS 9.1 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina, USA). To perform a meta-analysis of all replication and discovery cohorts, we employed inverse-variance techniques in the STATA software package (College Station, Texas, USA).
