Fig. 1: Study design.

I. The VTB Consortium was established within the framework of the GBMI. The participating biobanks performed GWAS for five thyroid diseases. II. An inverse-variance-weighted meta-analysis was conducted after quality control procedures. Previously known and new independent genetic associations were identified. III. Functional inference studies included genetic correlation analysis with cov-LDSC. Asterisks denote Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05. IV. TWAS (FUSION and S-PrediXcan). V. Pathway (KEGG and Reactome) and gene expression analyses (TCGA and ORIEN AVATAR). VI. PRS were developed for ThC, benign thyroid diseases and to distinguish malignant and benign thyroid nodules. VII. PRS were tested for association with thyroid diseases and aggressive ThC features extracted from clinical charts and surgical histopathology reports.