Tim Spector

Epidemiology Unit, King's College London, St Thomas' Hospital, UK

Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London and Director of the TwinsUK Registry at St Thomas' Hospital, London. He is Principal Investigator of the EU Euroclot and Treat OA study, and a partner in five others.

He founded the UK Twins Registry of 11,000 twins in 1993, which is one of the largest collections of genotype and phenotype information on twins worldwide, whose breadth of research has expanded to cover a wide range of common complex traits, many of which were previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment.

He has published over 400 research articles on common diseases. He has written several original articles on the heritability of a wide range of diseases and traits including back pain, acne, inflammation, obesity, memory, musical ability and sexuality. He has written several books, focusing on osteoporosis and genetics and in 2003 he published a popular book on genetics, Your Genes Unzipped.

Any competing interests declared are displayed with individual evaluations.

Faculty Member: Rheumatology & Clinical Immunology > Bone Biology, Osteoporosis & Other Diseases of Bone (since 13 December 2007)

All recent recommendations

• 6.4
  Hypoxia-inducible factor-2alpha is a catabolic regulator of osteoarthritic cartilage destruction.
  Recommended by Frank Beier with Veronica Ulici, Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai, Frances Williams
  
• 3.0
  The Stop Arthritis Very Early (SAVE) trial, an international multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial on glucocorticoids in very early arthritis.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Frances MK Williams, Guangju Zhai
  
• 6.0
  Trabecular morphometry by fractal signature analysis is a novel marker of osteoarthritis progression.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai, Frances Williams
  
• 6.5
  Osteoporosis associated with neutralizing autoantibodies against osteoprotegerin.
  Recommended by Tim Cundy, Tim Spector with Frances MK Williams, Jon Tobias with Emma Clark
  
• 6.0
  Vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 as a predictor of severe osteoarthritis of the hip and knee joints.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai, Frances MK Williams
  
• 3.0
  Attempt to replicate published genetic associations in a large, well-defined osteoarthritis case-control population (the GOAL study).
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Frances Williams, Guangju Zhai
  
• 6.0
  Meniscal tear in knees without surgery and the development of radiographic osteoarthritis among middle-aged and elderly persons: the multicenter osteoarthritis study.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai and Frances MK Williams
  
• 6.0
  A recessive skeletal dysplasia, SEMD aggrecan type, results from a missense mutation affecting the C-type lectin domain of aggrecan.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Frances Williams and Guangju Zhai
  
• 6.0
  Hand osteoarthritis in older women is associated with carotid and coronary atherosclerosis: The AGES - Reykjavik study.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai and Frances MK Williams
  
• 4.8
  A double blind, randomized, placebo controlled study of the efficacy and safety of 5-Loxin for treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee.
  Recommended by Paul Peloso, Tim Spector with Frances Williams and Guangju Zhai
  
• 4.8
  Common variants in DVWA on chromosome 3p24.3 are associated with susceptibility to knee osteoarthritis.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Frances Williams and Guangju Zhai, Johanne Martel-Pelletier with Pascal Reboul
  
• 3.0
  Osteonectin/SPARC polymorphisms in Caucasian men with idiopathic osteoporosis.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Frances Williams and Guangji Zhai
  
• 3.0
  Genetic effects on bone loss in peri- and postmenopausal women: a longitudinal twin study.
  Recommended by Tim Spector with Guangju Zhai and Frances Williams
  
• 3.0
  BMP-2 gene polymorphisms and osteoporosis: the Rotterdam Study.
  Recommended by Tim Spector
  
• 3.0
  Large-scale evidence for the effect of the COLIA1 Sp1 polymorphism on osteoporosis outcomes: the GENOMOS study.
  Recommended by Tim Spector