Our meta-analysis of Exome Chip genotypes yielded five unreported novel HR loci, and one unreported independent new secondary signal, which was a low-frequency non-synonymous SNV at the previously reported KIAA1755 locus. Our data strongly supported the association of SNVs at 11 of the 12 previously reported GWAS loci that were covered on the Exome Chip. All lead SNVs at all validated novel loci are common (MAF ≥ 5%) and have similar effect sizes, which are smaller than the effect sizes for the majority of previously reported SNVs (Supplementary Material, Fig. S7). Our study did not yield any rare SNV associations with HR, indicating that much larger sample sizes will be required in future studies to have sufficient power to detect effects of any rare variants and assess their contributions to HR heritability.
