Department of Medicine, Georgia Prevention Institution (GPI), Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University, Building HS-1640, Augusta, GA, 30912, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 26;11(1):8911. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88490-3.
Increased arterial stiffness measured by pulse wave velocity (PWV) is an important parameter in the assessment of cardiovascular risk. Our previous longitudinal study has demonstrated that carotid-distal PWV showed reasonable stability throughout youth and young adulthood. This stability might be driven by genetic factors that are expressed consistently over time. We aimed to illustrate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors to the stability of carotid-distal PWV from youth to young adulthood. We also examined potential ethnic differences. For this purpose, carotid-distal PWV was measured twice in 497 European American (EA) and African American (AA) twins, with an average interval time of 3 years. Twin modelling on PWV showed that heritability decreased over time (62-35%), with the nonshared environmental influences becoming larger. There was no correlation between the nonshared environmental factors on PWV measured at visit 1 and visit 2, with the phenotypic tracking correlation (r = 0.32) completely explained by shared genetic factors over time. Novel genetic influences were identified accounting for a significant part of the variance (19%) at the second measurement occasion. There was no evidence for ethnic differences. In summary, novel genetic effects appear during development into young adulthood and account for a considerable part of the variation in PWV. Environmental influences become larger with age for PWV.
动脉僵硬度的增加可以通过脉搏波速度（PWV）来测量，这是评估心血管风险的一个重要参数。我们之前的纵向研究表明，颈动脉-远端 PWV 在整个青年和成年早期都具有较好的稳定性。这种稳定性可能是由随着时间推移而持续表达的遗传因素驱动的。我们旨在说明遗传和环境因素对颈动脉-远端 PWV 从青年到成年早期的稳定性的相对贡献。我们还研究了潜在的种族差异。为此，我们在 497 对欧洲裔美国人（EA）和非裔美国人（AA）双胞胎中两次测量了颈动脉-远端 PWV，两次测量的平均间隔时间为 3 年。PWV 的双胞胎模型研究表明，遗传力随时间下降（62-35%），非共享环境影响变大。第一次和第二次测量时 PWV 的非共享环境因素之间没有相关性，表型追踪相关系数（r=0.32）完全由遗传因素随时间的共享解释。在第二次测量时，新的遗传因素可以解释 PWV 变异的很大一部分（19%）。没有证据表明存在种族差异。综上所述，新的遗传效应似乎在发育到成年早期的过程中出现，并解释了 PWV 变异的相当一部分。对于 PWV，环境影响随年龄的增长而变大。
