The list of SNPs that are genetically associated with lymphocyte count and the list of genes whose expression levels differ between individuals with high or low lymphocyte count were generated independently. Thus, the enrichment of gene-SNP pairs that are associated with low P-values in both lists is likely to be biologically significant. In particular, given this mutual corroboration, a possible model is that changes in the regulation of at least a subset of the 117 genes (those associated with a GWAS P-value that is smaller than the genome-wide median) may have a role in the regulation of lymphocyte count.
