Our results build on those of previous studies, particularly those of Schadt and colleagues [12]–[15] that focused on using transcriptome information to improve understanding of genetic signals, but the rapid accumulation of trait-associated SNPs through GWAS, coupled with the systematic efforts to catalog these variants [10],[16] has enabled us to generalize the concept that information on eQTLs will have utility for understanding the genetic component to complex traits. Our primary observations – that SNPs reproducibly associated with complex human traits are more likely to be eQTLs – are novel, although perhaps not unexpected given that few of even those SNPs most reproducibly associated with complex traits have been attributed to missense or nonsense variants. Our subsequent observations made in association studies in which we annotated SNPs with eQTL information, imply that at least some complex disorders have substantial numbers of undiscovered susceptibility loci that can be more easily discovered and characterized by annotating SNPs with information on eQTL scores. This is also a novel observation. Moreover, use of information on expression appears to benefit our understanding of not only more
