Chunk #43 — 6. The wider picture of replication efforts: consortia, data availability, and field synopses — 6.i. Example from the field of type 2 diabetes
inconsistency in observed associations could be ascribed to study design and, specifically, to matching cases and controls for BMI (DGI study). The FTO signal was quickly identified as the first robustly replicating association with obesity, mediating its effect on T2D through BMI. A truly genome-wide meta-analysis of the three scans ensued, with large-scale replication efforts in independent datasets of T2D cases and controls, all of European origin. This effort led to the identification of further novel T2D susceptibility loci. [59] Table 2 demonstrates the gains in power afforded by increasing sample size from a single scan to the synthesis of all three studies for a realistic common complex disease susceptibility locus.
