Difference Of Height And BMI Of Youths Between Rural And Urban Areas And Genome-wide Association Study On Wrist BMD

The paper is divided into two parts:(1) Differences of height and body mass index of youths in urban vs.rural areas in Hunan province of China:(2)A genome-wide association analysis suggests SOX6 as a wrist bone mass candidate gene.Differences of height andbody mass index of youths in urban vs.rural areas in Hunan province of China:Body mass index(BMI) and height were two important indicators for physical growth status of people.People's nutrition,living condition and overall health improved for thirty years.This study is to examine the trends in BMI and height changing in youths between urban and rural areas and between 1990s and 2000s. 24,194 urban youths and 7,130 rural youths were recruited in Hunan province of China.Both male andfemale youths from urban areas were significantly taller than youths from rural areas. in both the 1990s and 2000s(all p＜0.O01).The height of youths. was significantly greater in the 2000s compared to the corresponding gender and geographic subset in the 1990s (p＜0.001).Similar results were.obtained for BMI.There are significant differences of BMI and height between urban and rural areas and positive growth trends of BMI and height in youths from 1990s to 2000s.A genome-wide association analysis suggests SOX6 as a wrist bone mass candidate gene:Osteoporosis is a highly heritable common bone disease leading to fractures that severely impair the life quality of patients.Wrist fractures caused by osteoporosis have been,to a large extent,due to the scarcity of bone mass at wrist.In this study,we report the results of a genome-wide association study(GWAS) for wrist BMD, examining ⁵00,000 SNP markers in 1000 unrelated,homogeneous Caucasian subjects,which suggestively detected a novel wrist BMD gene -SOX6(p＝4.43×10^-5for allelic association with wrist BMD at rs1866822).It has been found that five SNPs in SOX6 gene showed highly suggestive associations with wrist BMD (rs1866822:p＝4.43×10^-5;rs11023787:p＝7.44×10^-5;rs878625: p＝9.21×10^-5;rs10832642:p＝9.36×10^-5;rs1045887: p＝1.11×10^-4).For validation,we performed SOX6 association for BMD in an independent Chinese sample.Five SNPs of SOX6 have been identified as significant not only in our Caucasian sample but also.in-Chinese.The subjects.with T allele of rs10832642 had significantly higher mean wrist BMD value than those with G allele(raw wrist BMD values were 0.480:0.458 g/cm² for T allele vs.G allele carriers,p＝0.014,Figure 3),and subjects with C allele of rs11023787 in SOX6 had significantly higher mean wrist BMD value than those with G allele(raw wrist BMD values were 0.485:0.462 g/cm² for C allele vs.G allele carriers, p＝4×10^-6).Bioinformatics analyses based on the identified suggestive SNPs and their highly correlated SNPs suggest the potentially significant functional mechanisms underlying bone metabolism and bone mass variation.