Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Apr;197(2):814-20.
doi: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2007.07.030. Epub 2007 Sep 6.

Heritability of carotid intima-media thickness: a twin study

Jinying Zhao  1 , Faiz A Cheema, J Douglas Bremner, Jack Goldberg, Shaoyong Su, Harold Snieder, Carisa Maisano, Linda Jones, Farhan Javed, Nancy Murrah, Ngoc-Anh Le, Viola Vaccarino
Affiliations

Heritability of carotid intima-media thickness: a twin study

Jinying Zhao et al. Atherosclerosis. 2008 Apr.

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the heritability of carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), a surrogate marker for atherosclerosis, independent of traditional coronary risk factors.

Methods and results: We performed a classical twin study of carotid IMT using 98 middle-aged male twin pairs, 58 monozygotic (MZ) and 40 dizygotic (DZ) pairs, from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. All twins were free of overt cardiovascular disease. Carotid IMT was measured by ultrasound. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the association between traditional cardiovascular risk factors and carotid IMT. Intraclass correlation coefficients and genetic modeling techniques were used to determine the relative contributions of genes and environment to the variation in carotid IMT. In our sample, the mean of the maximum carotid IMT was 0.75+/-0.11. Age, systolic blood pressure and HDL were significantly associated with carotid IMT. The intraclass correlation coefficient for carotid IMT was larger in MZ (0.66; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.62-0.69) than in DZ twins (0.37; 95% CI, 0.29-0.44), and the unadjusted heritability was 0.69 (95% CI, 0.54-0.79). After adjusting for traditional coronary risk factors, the heritability of carotid IMT was slightly reduced but still of considerable magnitude (0.59; 95% CI, 0.39-0.73).

Conclusion: Genetic factors have a substantial influence on the variation of carotid IMT. Most of this genetic effect occurs through pathways independent of traditional coronary risk factors.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Zdravkovic S, Wienke A, Pedersen NL, Marenberg ME, Yashin AI, De Faire U. Heritability of death from coronary heart disease: a 36-year follow-up of 20 966 Swedish twins. J Intern Med. 2002;252:247–254. - PubMed
    1. Fischer M, Broeckel U, Holmer S, Baessler A, Hengstenberg C, Mayer B, Erdmann J, Klein G, Riegger G, Jacob HJ, Schunkert H. Distinct heritable patterns of angiographic coronary artery disease in families with myocardial infarction. Circulation. 2005;111:855–862. - PubMed
    1. Leander K, Hallqvist J, Reuterwall C, Ahlbom A, de Faire U. Family history of coronary heart disease, a strong risk factor for myocardial infarction interacting with other cardiovascular risk factors: results from the stockholm heart epidemiology program (SHEEP) Epidemiology. 2001;12:215–221. - PubMed
    1. Wienke A, Holm NV, Skytthe A, Yashin AI. The heritability of mortality due to heart diseases: a correlated frailty model applied to Danish twins. Twin Res. 2001;4:266–274. - PubMed
    1. Liao D, Myers R, Hunt S, Shahar E, Paton C, Burke G, Province M, Heiss G. Familial history of stroke and stroke risk. The Family Heart Study. Stroke. 1997;28:1908–1912. - PubMed

Publication types