Home

Introduction

Osteoporosis is a common age-related complex disease with a strong genetic component. Osteoporotic fractures account for considerable disease burden and costs. The genes responsible, however, are poorly defined. It is by now generally assumed that - like for many other complex diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease - many gene variants are responsible but each with subtle effect. In a previous EU FP5 funded project, named GENOMOS, we have improved on this situation by bringing together several of Europe's largest collections of osteoporosic study populations with DNA available, and analysing the most commonly studied.

With the GEFOS project we here propose to capitalize on the success of GENOMOS by using the most advanced gene discovery tools that have become recently available, i.e., Genome Wide Association (GWA) analysis with high density SNP arrays, to identify common risk gene variants for osteoporosis.

GEFOS is a European Union Seventh Framework Package funded project, registered under grant agreement number: FP7-HEALTH- F2-2008-201865-GEFOS



News

Replication genoptyping GENOMOS studies(2010-02-12)
The second GEFOS meta-analysis on femoral neck and lumbar spine BMD including ~ 30,000 samples with genome-wide data is close to finalizing. De-novo genotyping in ~ 50,000 samples for about 50 SNPs from the BMD meta-analysis (and possibly other currently analyzed traits) will be pursued. This initiative is funded by the GEFOS FP7 EU Grant. Investiagtors interested in joining this effort please contact gefos[DOT]inw[AT]erasmusmc[DOT]nl. More information to come shortly.
59th ASHG Meeting(2009-10-24)

Link to GEFOS abstracts
GEFOS findings in Annals of Internal medicine(2009-10-20)
Collaborative meta-analysis: associations of 150 candidate genes with osteoporosis and osteoporotic fracture.
Link to Ann Int Medicine
GEFOS findings in Nature Genetics (advance online publication)(2009-10-06)
Twenty bone-mineral-density loci identified by large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies.
Link to Nature Genetics
Download press release