Allelic variants of the estrogen receptor genes and frailty phenotype in postmenopausal women.

Objective: The prevalence of frailty has been related to menopause. Our main objective was to investigate whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the estrogen receptor (ER) and genes were related to the frailty phenotype in a population of community-dwelling postmenopausal women.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed in which we selected five SNPs, three in the gene and two in the . Linear regression was used to estimate the percentage of phenotypic variance after adjusting for confounding variables.

Results: A total of 470 women (mean ± standard deviation age 63.83 ± 8.16 years) were included, of whom 137 women were frail. The SNP rs3798577 of the gene was the only variant associated with frailty, but this significance faded in the multivariant analysis. Body mass index ( = 0.012), number of comorbidities (0 vs. ≥2,  = 0.002) and two reproductive variables, number of miscarriages (none vs. ≥2,  = 0.036) and of childbirths (one vs. ≥3,  = 0.008), were independently related to frailty.

Conclusion: The five SNPs of the and genes tested were not correlated with frailty. Other SNPs of the ER warrant analysis to clarify whether variance in the gene response affects frailty status.