Cultural and biological determinants of lipoprotein concentrations.

A general linear model is presented here for biological and cultural inheritance involving ten parameters to be estimated from 16 correlations in nuclear families, providing ample degrees of freedom to test goodness of fit. Applied to six lipoprotein traits the model fits acceptably to all, although there is evidence of transient maternal effects for cholesterol and lipemia. Genetic heritability in children ranges from 0.175 for triglyceride to 0.562 for total cholesterol. Cultural heritability in children ranges from 0.012 for VLDL to 0.149 for HDL-cholesterol.