The Impact of Pedigree Structure on Heritability Estimates for Pulse Pressure in Three Studies

• Published in: Human heredity 2005-01, Vol.60 (2), p.63-72
• Main Authors: Hsu, Fang-Chi, Zaccaro, Daniel J., Lange, Leslie A., Arnett, Donna K., Langefeld, Carl D., Wagenknecht, Lynne E., Herrington, David M., Beck, Stephanie R., Freedman, Barry I., Bowden, Donald W., Rich, Stephen S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Blood Pressure - genetics; Blood vessels; Cardiovascular disease; Cardiovascular Diseases - genetics; Diabetes; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 - genetics; Drug resistance; Families & family life; Family Health - ethnology; Female; Humans; Hypertension - etiology; Insulin; Insulin Resistance - genetics; Male; Middle Aged; Multicenter Studies as Topic; Original Paper; Pedigree; Quantitative Trait, Heritable
• ISSN: 0001-5652; 1423-0062
• DOI: 10.1159/000087971

Objectives: Pulse pressure (PP) is a measure of large artery stiffness and has been shown to be an important predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The aims of the present study were to investigate the heritability of PP in three studies, the Diabetes Heart Study (DHS), the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Family Study (IRAS FS), and the NHLBI Family Heart Study (FHS), to estimate the residual heritability after inclusion of a common set of covariates, and to investigate the impact of pedigree structure on estimating heritability. Methods and Results: DHS is primarily a sibling pair nuclear family study design, while both IRAS FS and FHS have large pedigrees. Heritability estimates of log-transformed PP were obtained using variance component models. After adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity/center, height, diabetes status, and mean arterial pressure (MAP), heritability estimates of PP were 0.40 ± 0.08 , 0.22 ± 0.05, and 0.19 ± 0.03 in DHS, IRAS FS, and FHS, respectively. The heritability estimate from DHS was significantly different from both IRAS FS and FHS (both p values