Extended Data Fig. 1: Study selection.

Instances 0, 1 and 2 denote different data collection time periods (instance 0, 2006–2010; instance 1, 2012–2013; instance 2, 2014 to the present). At instance 2, VAT mass was measured by DXA. For the MR analysis, the cohort was split into two nonoverlapping subsets. IV, instrumental variable.