Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Lipid Res. 2013 Oct;54(10):2914-23. doi: 10.1194/jlr.P041673. Epub 2013 Aug 5.
Heritability estimates of metabolic syndrome traits vary widely across studies. Some studies have suggested that the contribution of genes may vary with age or sex. We estimated the heritability of 11 metabolic syndrome-related traits and height as a function of age and sex in a large population-based sample of twin families (N = 2,792-27,021, for different traits). A moderate-to-high heritability was found for all traits [from H(2) = 0.47 (insulin) to H(2) = 0.78 (BMI)]. The broad-sense heritability (H(2)) showed little variation between age groups in women; it differed somewhat more in men (e.g., for glucose, H(2) = 0.61 in young females, H(2) = 0.56 in older females, H(2) = 0.64 in young males, and H(2)= 0.27 in older males). While nonadditive genetic effects explained little variation in the younger subjects, nonadditive genetic effects became more important at a greater age. Our findings show that in an unselected sample (age range, ~18-98 years), the genetic contribution to individual differences in metabolic syndrome traits is moderate to large in both sexes and across age. Although the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome has greatly increased in the past decades due to lifestyle changes, our study indicates that most of the variation in metabolic syndrome traits between individuals is due to genetic differences.
代谢综合征特征的遗传力估计在不同研究中差异很大。一些研究表明，基因的贡献可能随年龄或性别而变化。我们在一个大型基于人群的双胞胎家庭样本中（不同特征的 N=2792-27021），估计了 11 种代谢综合征相关特征和身高随年龄和性别的遗传力。所有特征都发现具有中等到高度的遗传性[从 H(2)=0.47（胰岛素）到 H(2)=0.78（BMI）]。在女性中，广义遗传力（H(2)）在不同年龄组之间变化不大；在男性中则略有不同（例如，对于葡萄糖，H(2)=0.61 在年轻女性中，H(2)=0.56 在老年女性中，H(2)=0.64 在年轻男性中，H(2)=0.27 在老年男性中）。虽然非加性遗传效应在年轻受试者中只解释了很小的变异，但随着年龄的增长，非加性遗传效应变得更加重要。我们的研究结果表明，在一个未经选择的样本中（年龄范围约为 18-98 岁），在两性和各年龄段中，代谢综合征特征的个体差异的遗传贡献为中等到较大。尽管由于生活方式的改变，代谢综合征的患病率在过去几十年中大大增加，但我们的研究表明，个体之间代谢综合征特征的大部分差异是由于遗传差异造成的。
