Heritability of Cardiovascular Risk Factors in a Chinese Population – Taichung Community Health Study and Family Cohort

[[abstract]]Background and aim Previous studies reporting on estimates of heritability of cardiovascular risk factors in Chinese are limited. This study aims to estimate the heritability of cardiovascular risk factors in relatives of residents who participated in the Taichung Community Health Study (TCHS) and Family Cohort (TCHS-FC) while controlling as many potential confounders as possible. Methods A total of 1564 study subjects from 494 families with members aged 12–91 years were enrolled from a random sample of participants of TCHS and their family members (TCHS-FC) from 2009 to 2012. Anthropometric measurement, body composition, blood pressure, plasma lipids, fasting glucose, insulin, highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), and the ankle-brachial index (ABI), as well as a questionnaire interview, were obtained from each participant. Results Cardiovascular risk factors with estimates of heritability greater than 30% after multivariate adjustment were triglyceride (h2 = 0.41), HDL-C (h2 = 0.49), LDL-C (h2 = 0.47), total cholesterol (h2 = 0.46), hip circumference (h2 = 0.44), weight (h2 = 0.42), insulin (h2 = 0.39), hs-CRP (h2 = 0.38), BMI (h2 = 0.38), and percent body fat mass (h2 = 0.35). Correlation coefficients for significant sibling varied from 0.10 for weight to 0.47 for LDL-C whereas those for significant parent-offspring varied from 0.09 for fasting plasma glucose to 0.43 for baPWV. Conclusions This study demonstrated significant heritability and familial aggregation of cardiovascular risk factors in a random sample of ethnic Chinese population