Assessing the clinical risk factors of fragility fractures with GWAS data and Mendelian randomisation approach

This commentary on the paper " Assessment of the genetic and clinical determinants of fracture risk: genome wide association and mendelian randomisation study" published recently on the British Medrcal Journal (BMJ), has been focused on the analysis of the study design and the advantages/disadvantages of large-scale design. Besides discussing the main findings of the study, it is pointed out that the negative relationship between the traits should be interpreted carefully. Finally, we introduce the study design of Mendelian randomization (MR) and randomized controlled trial (RCT), the similarities and differences between them are compared. We believe that more and more MR studies based on large-scale genome wide association study (GWAS) data will be carried out in the next few years. (Chin J Endocrinol Metab, 2018, 34: 987-991) Key words: Fracture; Bone mineral density; Genome wide association study; Mendelian randomization