Salces I, Rebato E, Susanne C, Hauspie R C, Saha R, Dasgupta P
Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology, University of Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain.
Ann Hum Biol. 2007 Mar-Apr;34(2):226-39. doi: 10.1080/03014460601144128.
Longitudinal and semi-longitudinal growth studies on siblings reflecting heritability changes during growth are very scarce. Moreover, studies of variables other than height, weight and BMI are virtually non-existent.
The study compared changes in the heritability of six body lengths, four body breadths, and three indices between ages 4 and 19 years on the basis of a mixed-longitudinal sample of siblings, and examined whether heritability estimates change during the growth period. The data consisted of 238 brothers and 214 sisters from 134 middle-class nuclear families living in Kolkata (India). The analysis of sibling correlation was performed by maximum likelihood. The age-related patterns of heritabilities of the various traits were described by a cubic spline.
The heritability was very high and significant in most traits, and at all considered ages. Mean heritability in the 10 morphometric traits was 69.3%, which was higher than the heritability values for the three indices.
These results confirmed the existence of age-related trends in heritability of the considered morphometric traits. The sharp decline of the heritabilities at adolescence in most of the morphometric traits, and the acromio-iliac index in particular, may be due to the large inter-individual variation in the age at which the adolescent growth spurt is reached in both sexes.
关于兄弟姐妹的纵向和半纵向生长研究反映生长过程中遗传力变化的非常稀少。此外，除身高、体重和体重指数之外的变量研究几乎不存在。
本研究基于兄弟姐妹的混合纵向样本，比较了4至19岁之间六种身体长度、四种身体宽度和三个指数的遗传力变化，并检验了遗传力估计值在生长期间是否发生变化。数据包括来自居住在加尔各答（印度）的134个中产阶级核心家庭的238名兄弟和214名姐妹。通过最大似然法进行兄弟姐妹相关性分析。用三次样条描述各种性状遗传力的年龄相关模式。
在大多数性状以及所有考虑的年龄中，遗传力都非常高且显著。10个形态测量性状的平均遗传力为69.3%，高于三个指数的遗传力值。
这些结果证实了所考虑的形态测量性状遗传力存在年龄相关趋势。大多数形态测量性状，尤其是肩峰-髂骨指数，在青春期遗传力急剧下降，可能是由于两性达到青春期生长突增的年龄个体间差异很大。
