Heritability analysis on body size indices of adult twins in Qingdao

  Objective   To discuss the extent that inheritance impacts on body size indices, w hich include body mass index(BMI)and waistohip ratio(WHR).

  Methods   Based on zygosity identification, the heritability of body size indices was studied for 496 pairs of twins, aged on less than 24 years old, who were voluntary to participate in this study.Mx software package was used as the statistical method to build structural equation models.

  Results   The heritability estimated for BMI was 76%, which was 33% and 74% for male and female respectively.For WHR, the heritability was 62%, 0.12% and 74% respectively for male and female.

  Conclusion   Amongthe factors of body size, BMI and WHR are both influenced mostly by inheritance.For females, inher itance influnces mostly on BMI and WHR.For males, the inher itable influence is larger than en vironmental factors on BMI and is little on WHR.