Heritability of Metabolic Syndrome Traits among Healthy Younger Adults: A population-based study in China

B F Luo ¹, L Du ¹, J X Li ², B Y Pan ¹, J Xu ¹, J Chen ¹, X Y Yin ³ and F Zhang ^3*

¹ Guangzhou Center for Disease Prevention and Control, China
² Peking University, China
³ Anhui Medical University, China

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: fengyzhang{at}hotmail.com.

Accepted 21 July 2009

Abstract

Objective: To estimate heritability of metabolic syndrome traits among healthy younger adults in human population in China, and examine potential sex-difference in heritability and parental effect on metabolic syndrome.

Methods: Using offspring-parent regression, we estimated heritability (h2) of metabolic syndrome traits based on 452 child-parent triads identified from a population-based random survey on metabolic syndrome among people over age of 15 years in Guangzhou, China.

Results: BMI, Cholesterol, HDL-C, LDL-C, FPG and Waist-C were more heritable (h2, 0.42 to 0.545), whereas SBP, DBP, and TG were less heritable (h2, 0.14 to 0.28). Sons had marked increases in heritability for all traits over daughters, particularly Cholesterol (0.653 vs 0.356), FPG (0.602vs 0.313), LDL-C(0.521 vs 0.329) and TG (0.395 vs 0.187) over daughters. Offspring-mother seemed to have a higher heritability in every traits except FPG (0.67 vs 0.794) than offspring-father, most notably for BDP (0.308 vs 0.122), SBP (0.288 vs 0.146), TG (0.387 vs 0.239) and Waist-C (0.581 vs 0.354).

Conclusion: We estimated the heritability of metabolic syndrome traits in human population based on unique population-based offspring-parent sample from China, and found important evidence that maternal and paternal effect on these traits are different and the sex-difference in heritability is marked.