As a positive control, and consistent with our previously reported analysis12, carriage of the PNPLA3 rs738409 minor allele was significantly associated with degree of steatosis in multivariate analysis adopting an additive model adjusted for gender, age at biopsy, BMI and presence of T2DM (β=0.192±0.056, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.082–0.301; P=6.74 × 10−4). Here, PNPLA3 is linked to steatosis.