The effects of the associated variants on BMI were estimated using data solely from genotyped stage 2 samples, to lessen the impact of the ‘winner's curse’; they ranged from 0.06 kg/m2 to 0.33 kg/m2 per allele, corresponding to a change of 173–954 g in weight per allele in adults who are 160–180 cm tall (Table 1). In our stage 2 samples, the six newly discovered loci together account for 0.40% of the variance of BMI, and in conjunction with the known associations at FTO and MC4R account for 0.84% of the variance (Table 1). We also estimated the allelic odds ratios for these six newly discovered variants on the risk of being overweight (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2) or obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) compared to non-overweight controls (BMI < 25 kg/m2). According to data from the newly genotyped stage 2 samples, the allelic odds ratios for being overweight for each of the six variants ranged from 1.03 to 1.14, and for being obese from 1.03 to 1.25 (Supplementary Table 8 online).
