full global effect of smoking is yet to occur. COPD is the third leading cause of death globally. For previous evidence of genetic associations, we gave the highest ranking to associations reaching genome-wide significance in genome-wide association studies, a lower ranking to associations not reaching genome-wide significance in genome-wide association studies, and the lowest ranking to associations reported in candidate gene studies. To assess evidence of loci associated with lung function, COPD, and smoking behaviour, we queried the Catalog of Published Genome-Wide Association Studies. We used this evidence to report our known findings for genetic variants shown to be associated with forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1; eight loci) and smoking behaviour (seven loci). We report candidate gene associations only for variants for which we found genome-wide evidence of association.Added value of this studyWe describe, to our knowledge, the first genetic study using the UK Biobank resource and show the quality of the phenotype and genotype data. Additionally, we describe an advance in imputation quality afforded by the use of a newly designed genotyping array used in conjunction with the largest reference panel available so far. A slightly modified version of this array is being used to genotype the
