title: Genetic and environmental correlations between bone mineral density and bone size in Caucasians.
abstract: To explore the magnitude of common genetic and environmental effects shared by bone mineral density (BMD) and bone size (BS) in a large sample of 4,489 subjects (2,667 females and 1,822 males) from 582 Caucasian pedigrees, we performed a bivariate variance decomposition analysis to evaluate genetic correlation (rhoG), environmental correlation (rhoE), and phenotypic correlation (rhoP) between BMD and BS at the spine and hip, as well as their "synthesized" skeletal site (bone mineral density principal component, bone size principal component) generated by principal components analysis. Significant rhoG, rhoE, and rhoP were detected, but the shared genetic influence on BMD and BS was only 21%, 1.3%, and 11.6% at the spine, hip, and their joint variable, respectively. The results suggest that it may be important to choose both BMD and BS, especially at the hip, as surrogate phenotypes for osteoporosis genetic studies in Caucasians.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular and Statistical Genetics, College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan 410081, PR China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Yan-Fang
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Shu-Feng
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Lei
authors.forename: Yan-Bo
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hong-Wen
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Deng
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015519:Bone Density / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010024:Osteoporosis / Q000235:genetics; D010375:Pedigree; D010641:Phenotype; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics*