European-identified loci in this study may be due to lack of power, these loci have demonstrated inconclusive association with BMI in African Americans (23,25,38), which may reflect allelic (39), locus heterogeneity and difference in linkage disequilibrium in African American as compared to European-derived populations. Larger sample sizes and thorough examination of these loci will be required to delineate their effects in African Americans. A recent GWAS on anthropometric traits has been conducted in two populations of Africans and African Americans. Nominal association was observed at rs8077681 in SLC39A11 in the African-American GWAS samples (P = 0.0011) but this SNP was not replicated in additional samples (40). In our GWAS, we observed nominal association (P = 0.0001) in a nearby SNP rs9893303 but showed no replication (P = 0.11) (Supplementary Table S2 online). rs8077681 and rs9893303 were not in linkage disequilibrium (D′ = 0, r2 = 0) in our African American samples. This locus may warrant further investigation.
