For both MPV and MCV we observed that the identified cis- and trans-eQTL probes generally were more strongly co-expressed in peripheral blood than expected (Figure S4, MPV co-expression Wilcoxon P<10−200, MCV co-expression Wilcoxon P = 0.009), substantiating the likelihood these genes reflect coherent biological sets. We repeated this co-expression analysis after we had regressed out all cis- and trans-eQTL effects, and observed that most of this co-expression was independent of the eQTL SNP-effect on the expression of these genes, which further substantiates that these genes are biologically related (MPV co-expression Wilcoxon P<1−200, MCV co-expression Wilcoxon P = 0.018).
