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