Associations of polymorphisms in the SOST gene and bone mineral density in postmenopausal Chinese Women.

UNLABELLED: The bone mineral density (BMD) of a total of 1,379 healthy postmenopausal Chinese women was measured. Ten tagging SNPs of the sclerostin (SOST) gene were genotyped. Our results suggest that the polymorphisms of the rs2023794 and rs74252774 in the SOST gene were associated with BMD of the lumbar spine in postmenopausal Chinese women.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of the study was to determine the associations between polymorphisms of SOST gene and BMD in postmenopausal Chinese women.

METHODS

A total of 1,379 independent healthy postmenopausal Chinese women including 703 in our previous study were recruited. The BMD of the lumbar spine 1-4 (L1-4) and left proximal femur including total hip and femoral neck were measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Ten tagging SNPs (rs1234612, rs1513670, rs1634330, rs1708635, rs2023794, rs7220711, rs74252774, rs851057, rs851058, and rs865429) of the SOST gene were genotyped.

RESULTS

The rs2023794 and rs74252774 and the haplotype ACCATTCT of SOST gene were associated with age and body mass index (BMI) adjusted L1-4 BMD (P values were 0.010, 0.007, and 0.007, respectively) even after performing the Bonferroni multiple-significance-test correction. There was a clear trend in these regions that the CC genotype of the rs2023794 and the TT genotype of the rs74252774 have higher BMD values than other genotypes. The contributions of the rs2023794 and rs74252774 to the phenotypic variation of L1-4 BMD were 0.6 and 0.7 %, respectively. We failed to find any association between the 10 SNPs and 6 haplotypes of the SOST gene and BMD at the hip site in this study.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that the polymorphisms of the rs2023794 and rs74252774 in the SOST gene were associated with BMD of the lumbar spine in a large sample of postmenopausal Chinese women.