Thyroid stimulating hormone and bone mineral density: evidence from a two-sample Mendelian randomization study and a candidate gene association study
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
With population aging, prevalence of low bone mineral density (BMD) and associated fracture risk are increased. To determine whether low circulating thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) levels within the normal range are causally related to BMD, we conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study. Furthermore, we tested whether common genetic variants in the TSH receptor (TSHR) gene and genetic variants influencing expression of TSHR (eQTLs) are associated with BMD. For both analyses, we used summary-level data of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) investigating BMD of the femoral neck (N = 32,735) and the lumbar spine (N = 28,498) in cohorts of European ancestry from the Genetic Factors of Osteoporosis (GEFOS) Consortium. For the MR study, we selected 20 genetic variants that were previously identified for circulating TSH levels in a GWAS meta-analysis (N = 26,420). All independent genetic instruments for TSH were combined in analyses for both femoral neck and lumbar spine BMD. In these studies, we found no evidence that a genetically determined 1 standard deviation (SD) decrease in circulating TSH concentration was associated with femoral neck BMD (0.003 SD decrease in BMD per SD decrease of TSH, 95% C.I. -0.053; 0.048, P = 0.92) or lumbar spine BMD (0.010 SD decrease in BMD per SD decrease of TSH, 95% C.I. -0.069; 0.049, P = 0.73). A total of 706 common genetic variants have been mapped to the TSHR locus and expression loci for TSHR. However, none of these genetic variants were associated with BMD at the femoral neck or lumbar spine. In conclusion, we found no evidence for a causal effect of circulating TSH on BMD, nor did we find any association between genetic variation at the TSHR locus or expression thereof and BMD. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Date Issued
2018-07-01
Date Acceptance
2018-03-14
Citation
Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, 2018, 33 (7), pp.1318-1325
ISSN
1523-4681
Publisher
American Society for Bone and Mineral Research
Start Page
1318
End Page
1325
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Bone and Mineral Research
Volume
33
Issue
7
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research Published by WileyPeriodicals, Inc.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29544020
Subjects
DXA
General population studies
Human association studies
Neuroendocrine
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2018-03-15