Our study began with a genome-wide screen for discovery of loci potentially associated with two different anthropometric measures of central adiposity: waist circumference (WC) and waist-hip-ratio (WHR) [1]. For each of the traits we combined the summary statistics of 16 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in meta-analyses with 38,580 (WC) and 37,670 (WHR) individuals, respectively (stage 1). These studies included nine population-based cohorts, four case cohorts (three for T2D and one for Hypertension), and three control cohorts (two originally paired with T2D and one with Breast Cancer) (Table S3). Following the discovery GWA meta-analysis, follow-up of our top association signals involved: (a) addition of data for markers of interest from studies with pre-existing “in-silico” GWA results (stage 2a; eight cohorts, maximum 13,830 individuals) and (b) “de novo” genotyping (stage 2b; 20 cohorts, maximum 56,859 individuals) giving a total of 70,689 (WC) or 61,612 (WHR) follow-up samples (collectively referred to as stage 2). In addition, genome wide signals for WC identified after stage 2 were confirmed using data with The Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, whose
