About the Authors

Erfan Aref-Eshghi

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Yuhua Zhang

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Deborah Hart

Affiliation Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Ana M. Valdes

Affiliation Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Andrew Furey

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Glynn Martin

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Guang Sun

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Proton Rahman

Affiliation Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Nigel Arden

Affiliation Musculoskeletal Epidemiology and Biobank, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Tim D. Spector

Affiliation Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Guangju Zhai

guangju.zhai@med.mun.ca

Affiliations Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: GZ EAE. Performed the experiments: DH AMV NA TDS. Analyzed the data: EAE GZ YZ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: GZ EAE AF GM GS PR. Wrote the paper: EAE GZ. Revision: YZ DH AMV AF GM GS PR NA TDS GZ.