About the Authors

Nicole Bender

nbender@ispm.unibe.ch

Affiliations Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Noëmi Allemann

Affiliation Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Diana Marek

Affiliation Department of Medical Genetics, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Lausanne, Switzerland

Peter Vollenweider

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland

Gérard Waeber

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland

Vincent Mooser

Affiliation GlaxoSmithKline, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Matthias Egger

Affiliation Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Murielle Bochud

Affiliation Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Competing Interests

The authors have the following competing interest: Vincent Mooser is an employee of GlaxoSmithKline, Philadelphia. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors′ adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NB MB. Performed the experiments: NB NA GW VM PV. Analyzed the data: NB MB DM ME. Wrote the paper: NB MB ME.