The association results of these 60 SNPs in all six GWAS and replication cohorts were then combined by meta-analysis to evaluate their overall effects (Supplementary Table S2 online). Among these, five SNPs showed suggestive associations at P < 1 × 10−4 with effect sizes between 0.091 and 0.167 s.d. unit (∼0.67 to 1.24 kg/m2) of BMI for each copy of the effect allele (Table 2). Of note, the four nominally associated SNPs in the replication study (rs6794092, rs2033195, rs815611, and rs6088887) showed the same direction of associations in all six cohorts (Supplementary Table S1 online). In addition, the former three SNPs became more significant (2.4 × 10−6 < P < 2.5 × 10−5) when compared to the GWAS results alone (3.9 × 10−6 < P < 2 × 10−4). rs2033195 and rs815611 (5.4 × 10−6 < P < 5.6 × 10−6) located between the genes MFAP3 and GALNT10 on chromosome 5 were highly correlated in our samples (r2 = 0.94). Major alleles of both SNPs were associated with increased BMI, supporting the confidence of genotyping accuracy and associations. rs268972 showed
