The Utility of Genetic Risk Score to Improve Performance of FRAX for Fracture Prediction in US Postmenopausal Women.

Abstract

The ability of the fracture risk assessment tool (FRAX) in discriminating fracture and non-fracture in postmenopausal women remains suboptimal. Adding a genetic profile may improve the performance of FRAX. Three genetic risk scores (GRSs) (GRS_fracture, GRS_BMD, GRS_eBMD) were calculated for each participant in the Women's Health Initiative Study (n = 23,981), based on the summary statistics of three comprehensive osteoporosis-related genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The primary outcomes were incident major osteoporotic fracture (MOF) and hip fracture (HF). The association between each GRS and fracture risk were evaluated in separate Cox Proportional Hazard models, with FRAX clinical risk factors adjusted for. The discrimination ability of each model was assessed using Area Under the Curve (AUC). The predictive improvement attributable to each GRSs was assessed using the net reclassification improvement (NRI) and the integrated discrimination improvement (IDI). GRS_BMD and GRS_eBMD were significantly associated with MOF and HF risk, independent of the base FRAX risk factors. Compare to the base FRAX model, the models with GRS_fracture, GRS_BMD, and GRS_eBMD improved the reclassification of MOF by 0.5% (95% CI, 0.2% to 0.9%, p = p < .01), 0.3% (95% CI, 0.1% to 0.6%, p = 0.01), and 2.1% (95% CI, 0.3% to 2.8%, p < .01), respectively. Similar results were also observed when using HF as an outcome. Our study suggested that the addition of genetic profiles provide limited improvements in the reclassification of FRAX for MOF and HF.