Strontium ranelate in the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis: impact of vitamin D receptor and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 gene polymorphisms on bone mineral density: a pilot study

Objective: to investigate the impact of VDR and MCP-1 gene polymorphisms on the efficiency of 12-month therapy with strontium ranelate (SR) in women with postmenopausal osteoporosis (OP). Subjects and methods. The investigation enrolled 34 postmenopausal women (mean age 65+8 years), who was diagnosed with OP by lumbar spine and/or proximal femur examinations using a Hologic QDR 4500W X-ray bone densitometer. The gene polymorphisms of VDR (BsmI) and MCP-1 (-2518A/G) were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction, followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. Results and discussion. The carriers of the BB and ВЬ genotypes of the VDR gene had a statistically significantly lower increase in the bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar spine than those of the homozygous recessive bb genotype (p = 0.024 and p = 0.022, respectively) and the bb genotype and the BB+Bb genotype (p = 0.004), and the carriers of the GА genotype of MCP-1 gene had a statistically significantly lower increase in the BMD of the entire proximal femur than those of the homozygous AA genotype (0.2+2.5% and 4.4+4.4%, respectively; p = 0.004) at 12 months after SR treatment. Conclusion. The findings may suggest that the BB and Bb genotypes of the VDR gene and the GA genotype of the MCP-1 gene may negatively affect the efficacy of SR in patients with OP. However, additional studies on a larger sample of patients, including those with other forms of OP, are required to confirm this assumption.