A 3-stage approach was pursued (Table 2). In the first stage, data on the 2.2 million SNPs were combined across 10,128 samples in a meta-analysis framework. In the second stage, 69 SNPs were selected and genotyped in 22,426 additional independent samples, all of European descent. In the third stage, 11 of these promising signals were taken forward to a further independent set of samples of European descent, consisting of 57,366 T2D cases and controls.
