Genetic variants affecting miRNA expression suggest a possible mechanism through which genetic variants can influence downstream molecular- or phenotypic traits, and emphasise the need to characterise the extent to which miRNA expression levels are associated with common genetic variants in adipose tissue. For example, SNPs may exert an effect on miRNA expression, which may subsequently affect mRNA expression, and ultimately, phenotypic traits. MiRNA eQTL analysis allows us to assess the first part of this mode of action. We found that several miRNAs do indeed have significant eQTLs, suggesting, at least for a subset of miRNAs, that there is evidence of genetic variation controlling miRNA expression levels in human adipose tissue. Our results are in line with recent data from a study of human fibroblasts [20], as well as rodent models of T2D, where the expression of ∼10% of miRNAs were reported to be under genetic control [23]. We note that the relatively high FDR adjusted p-values (up to 0.33 in abdominal adipose tissue, and up to 0.6 in gluteal adipose tissue) ( Table 1 , Table 2 ) in the
