Identifying gene-gene interactions that are highly associated with Body Mass Index using Quantitative Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (QMDR)

Background Despite heritability estimates of 40–70 % for obesity, less than 2 % of its variation is explained by Body Mass Index (BMI) associated loci that have been identified so far. Epistasis, or gene-gene interactions are a plausible source to explain portions of the missing heritability of BMI.