Given the known sexual dimorphism of WHR and evidence from variance decomposition studies that this reflects sex-specific genetic effects17, we performed sex-specific meta-analyses for the 14 WHR associated SNPs. These analyses included up to 108,979 women (42,735 discovery, 66,244 follow-up) or 82,483 men (34,601 discovery, 47,882 follow-up). In joint analysis of discovery and follow-up data, 12 of the 14 SNPs reached genome-wide significance in women, but only 3 in men (Table 2). At all but one locus (TBX15-WARS2), effect-size estimates were numerically greater in women. At seven of the loci (those near RSPO3, VEGFA, GRB14, LYPLAL1, HOXC13, ITPR2-SSPN and ADAMTS9), there were marked differences in sex-specific beta-coefficients (P ranging from 1.9 × 10−3 to 1.2 × 10−13). All loci displayed consistent patterns of sex-specific differences in both discovery and follow-up studies (Table 2). These 14 loci explain 1.34% of the variance in WHR (after adjustment for BMI and age) in women, but only 0.46% in men.
