In summary, by focusing on anthropometric measures of central obesity, we have identified three loci strongly implicated in the regulation of human adiposity and fat distribution. The extent of phenotypic variation explained by these variants is small. However, the variant or variants at each locus which are directly involved in influencing these traits are yet to be identified, and these may have more substantial effects. Even if this is not the case, effect size has very little bearing on the biological pertinence of these findings nor the potential impact of perturbing these pathways through therapeutic modification. Although determination of the influence of these signals on the development and maintenance of specific fat depots will require analyses that relate genetic variation to detailed imaging data in large numbers of subjects, the loci identified appear to highlight a variety of novel mechanisms involved in the regulation of adiposity. At this stage, it is unclear to what extent these same loci influence fat distribution in other ethnic groups, such as South Asians, in which patterns of fat distribution, and the relationships between fat
