About the Authors

Enrico Petretto

Contributed equally to this work with: Enrico Petretto, Leonardo Bottolo

Affiliations Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Leonardo Bottolo

Contributed equally to this work with: Enrico Petretto, Leonardo Bottolo

Affiliations Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Sarah R. Langley

Affiliation Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Matthias Heinig

Affiliation Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany

Chris McDermott-Roe

Affiliation Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Rizwan Sarwar

Affiliation Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Michal Pravenec

Affiliations Institute of Physiology, Czech Academy of Sciences and Centre for Applied Genomics, Prague, Czech Republic, Charles University in Prague, Institute of Biology and Medical Genetics of the First Faculty of Medicine and General Teaching Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic

Norbert Hübner

Affiliation Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany

Timothy J. Aitman

Affiliations Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, Section of Molecular Genetics and Rheumatology, Division and Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Stuart A. Cook

Affiliations Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Sylvia Richardson

sylvia.richardson@imperial.ac.uk

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Designed the study: EP LB. Developed the code for the SBR and SBMR analyses: LB. Performed all statistical analyses: EP LB SRL. Performed all PCR based experiments: CMR RS SAC. Contributed reagents and materials for the study: MH MP NH TJA SAC. Wrote the paper: EP LB SR.