Genetic markers of bone and joint health and physical capability in older adults: the HALCyon programme.
BACKGROUND
Good bone and joint health is essential for the physical tasks of daily living and poorer indicators of physical capability in older adults have been associated with increased mortality rates. Genetic variants of indicators of bone and joint health may be associated with measures of physical capability.


METHODS
As part of the Healthy Ageing across the Life Course (HALCyon) programme, men and women aged between 52 and 90+ years from six UK cohorts were genotyped for a polymorphism associated with serum calcium (rs1801725, CASR), two polymorphisms associated with bone mineral density (BMD) (rs2941740, ESR1 and rs9594759, RANKL) and one associated with osteoarthritis risk rs3815148 (COG5). Meta-analysis was used to pool within-study effects of the associations between each of the polymorphisms and measures of physical capability: grip strength, timed walk or get up and go, chair rises and standing balance.


RESULTS
Few important associations were observed among the several tests. We found that carriers of the serum calcium-raising allele had poorer grip strength compared with non-carriers (pooled p=0.05, n=11,239) after adjusting for age and sex. Inconsistent results were observed for the two variants associated with BMD and we found no evidence for an association between rs3815148 (COG5) and any of the physical capability measures.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest elevated serum calcium levels may lead to lower grip strength, though this requires further replication. Our results do not provide evidence for a substantial influence of these variants in ESR1, RANKL and COG5 on physical capability in older adults.
School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PS, UK. tamuno.alfred@bristol.ac.uk
Tamuno
T
Alfred
Yoav
Y
Ben-Shlomo
Rachel
R
Cooper
Rebecca
R
Hardy
Cyrus
C
Cooper
Ian J
IJ
Deary
David
D
Gunnell
Sarah E
SE
Harris
Meena
M
Kumari
Richard M
RM
Martin
Avan Aihie
AA
Sayer
John M
JM
Starr
Diana
D
Kuh
Ian N M
IN
Day
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000502:physiology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D005819:Genetic Markers; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D007596:Joints / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011786:Quality Control; D006113:United Kingdom
D005819:Genetic Markers