Lean mass plays a gender-specific role in familial resemblance for femoral neck bone mineral density in adult subjects

Introduction Whether the femoral neck bone mineral density (FN BMD) of children may be better predicted from that of their parents when taking into account the anthropometry of the children was assessed in a healthy adult sample consisting of 86 mother-daughter, 32 mother-son, 32 father-daughter, and 23 father-son pairs from 128 families. Heritability for FN BMD, which is considered to be a measurement of general resemblance, was defined as the regression coefficient of the mean of the parents’ BMD. Among the anthropometric factors, lean mass was the most strongly associated with FN BMD following the adjustment for age in women (r=0.52, p<0.0001) and men (r=0.25, p=0.02). After adjustment for age, calcium intake, physical activity, and menopause and hormonal replacement therapy if relevant, heritability estimates (h2) for FN BMD were 0.68±0.23 [95% credible interval (CI): 0.15–0.99] in father-daughter pairs, 0.40±0.17 (95% CI: 0.08–0.74) in mother-daughter pairs, and 0.19±0.15 (95% CI: 0.01–0.57) in father-son pairs. Adjustment for lean mass of children increased the h2 for FN BMD in mother-son pairs [from 0.24±0.17 (95% CI: 0.01–0.57) to 0.66±0.18 (95% CI: 0.26–0.95)]. The present results show that FN BMD is heritable in adult father-daughter pairs (7.2% of a daughter’s FN BMD variance was explained by the father’s FN BMD) and that taking into account the lean mass of sons might improve the prediction of their FN BMD based on that of their mother’s (reduction of sons’ FN BMD residual variance by 5.1%). Taking the lean mass of children into account might improve the prediction of their FN BMD by 9.1% in daughters and by 18.1% in sons, irrespective of their parent’s FN BMD. These results, obtained using a Bayesian regression model, have to be confirmed in further studies involving a greater number of adult parent-offspring pairs of both genders before extrapolation to clinical practice.