Longitudinal Investigation into Genetics in the Conservation of Metabolic Phenotypes in Danish and Chinese Twins

Abstract

Longitudinal twin studies on long term conservation of individual metabolic phenotypes can help to explore the genetic and environmental basis in maintaining metabolic homeostasis and metabolic health. We performed a longitudinal twin study on 12 metabolic phenotypes from Danish twins followed up for 12 years and Chinese twins traced for 7 years. The study covered a relatively large sample of 502 pairs of Danish adult twins with a mean age at intake of 38 years and a total of 181 Chinese adult twin pairs with a mean baseline age of 39.5 years. Bivariate twin models were fitted to the longitudinal measurements taken at two time points (at baseline and follow-up) to estimate the genetic and environmental contributions to phenotype variation and correlation at and between the two time points. High genetic components in the regulation of intra-individual phenotype correlation or stability over time were estimated in both Danish (h2>0.75 except fasting blood glucose) and Chinese (h2>0.72 except blood pressure) twins; moderate to high genetic contribution to phenotype variation at the two time points were also estimated except for the low genetic regulation on glucose in Danish and on blood pressure in Chinese twins. Meanwhile the bivariate twin models estimated shared environmental contributions to the variance and covariance in fasting blood glucose in Danish twins, and in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, low and high density lipoprotein cholesterol in Chinese twins. Overall, our longitudinal twin study on long-term stability of metabolic phenotypes in Danish and Chinese twins identified a common pattern of high genetic control over phenotype conservation, and at the same time revealed population-specific patterns of genetic and common environmental regulation on the variance as well as covariance of glucose and blood pressure.

Heritability and genome-wide association analyses of fasting plasma glucose in Chinese adult twins

“…In this study, we evaluated the genetic contributions to FPG variation by twin modelling analyses and further identified the genetic variants associated with FPG levels by GWAS. We found that the heritability of FPG was 0.68, which was consistent with the previously reported range (0.22–0.71) in mainland China [ 16 , 30 – 34 ].…”

The Genetic Architecture of the Clustering of Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Study of 8- to 17-Year-Old Chinese Twins

“…Epidemiologic studies have found that men have a higher risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to women and have a higher risk of developing CVD at earlier onset (Leutner et al, 2016). Previous twin studies on common CVD risk factors have also established that genetic and environmental factors contributing to them often differ by sex, age, and ethnicity (Li et al, 2016;Liao et al, 2017;Poveda et al, 2017;Song et al, 2015;Tanaka et al, 2015). For example, a review of twin and family studies reported that heritability estimates range from .25 to .70 for body mass index (BMI); from .25 to .60 for triglycerides (TGs); from .50 to .60 for total cholesterol (TC); from .20 to .70 for resting systolic blood pressure (SBP); and from .10 to .50 for diastolic blood pressure (DBP; Rankinen et al, 2015).…”

The Danish Twin Registry: An Updated Overview

“…Participants were visited by a mobile examination unit at their home, at work or at any other place at their convenience. The participants completed three different questionnaires covering health and lifestyle, sleep and work, and diet and underwent a clinical examination including ECG, blood pressure measurement, body composition, spirometry, various anthropometric measures as well as blood, saliva and urine sampling for biobanking (Li et al, 2016).…”