4q22.1 contributes to bone mineral density and osteoporosis susceptibility in postmenopausal women of Chinese Han population

Osteoporosis is a multifactorial disease in which genetic determinants are modulated by hormonal, environmental and nutritional factors. An important clinical risk factor in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis is the presence of genetics polymorphism in/around susceptibility genes/regions. This study explored whether the region of 4q22.1, which confers risk of developing osteoporosis in some populations, associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis susceptibility in postmenopausal women of Han Chinese. We investigated 32 SNPs with minor allele frequencies ≥0.05 between 20 kb upstream and 20 kb downstream (40 kb window) of rs6532023, mapping in the 4q22.1 region, which was reported to be significantly associated with osteoporosis in previous studies. We found that rs6532023 was significantly associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis (corrected p = 0.015) in our sample, including 440 cases and 640 controls, and allele G was supposed as a risk factor while T worked as a protective factor. Further genotype association analyses suggested a similar pattern (corrected p = 0.040). Additionally, analyses by haplotypes indicated that a haplotype block rs7683315-rs6532023-rs1471400-rs1471403 in the region associated with bone mineral density and osteoporosis (global p = 0.032), and risk haplotype A-G-G-C had almost 1.5-fold increased in the cases. To our knowledge, this is the first report to examine 4q22.1 region polymorphisms and osteoporosis in Han Chinese. Our results provide further evidence for an effect of the region of 4q22.1 on the etiology of osteoporosis and suggest that 4q22.1 may be a genetic risk factor for bone mineral density and osteoporosis.