To investigate potential sources of heterogeneity between groups we compared the effect estimates of our 97 GWS SNPs for men versus women of European ancestry and Europeans versus non-Europeans. To address the effects of studies ascertained on a specific disease or phenotype on our results we also compare the effect estimates of European ancestry studies of population-based studies with the following European-descent subsets of studies: (1) non-population-based studies (that is, those ascertained on a specific disease or phenotype); (2) type 2 diabetes cases; (3) type 2 diabetes controls; (4) combined type 2 diabetes cases and controls; (5) CAD cases; (6) CAD controls; and (7) combined CAD cases and controls (Supplementary Tables 10 and 11). We also tested for heterogeneity of effect estimates between our European sex-combined meta-analysis and results from recent GWAS meta-analyses for BMI in individuals of African or east Asian ancestry10,41 (Supplementary Table 9). Heterogeneity was assessed as described previously42. A Bonferroni-corrected P < 5 × 10−4 (corrected for 97 tests) was used to assess significance. For heterogeneity tests assessing effects of ascertainment, we also used a 5% FDR threshold to assess significance of heterogeneity statistics (Supplementary Table 11).
