In order to help identify the potential causal gene in the region surrounding our lead SNP, we first reviewed publically available databases, but did not identify any associations of rs1659258 with eQTLs (see methods for additional details). However, most of these databases consist of women and men in combined analyses; given that our GWAS finding was in women alone, we performed sex-specific eQTL analyses of rs1659258 in up to 848 patients (mean BMI 50.5 kg/m2) who underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery who also underwent subcutaneous and visceral fat biopsy [40]. We performed eQTL testing in the 1 MB region surrounding rs1659258 (n = 31 genes). Using a corrected p-value threshold of p<0.05, only THNSL2 expression in subcutaneous fat in women was associated with our lead SNP (p = 0.03) but not men (p = 0.96). We did not observe association with expression in VAT in either women or men.
