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Genetic influences on exercise participation in 37,051 twin pairs from seven countries

Stubbe, JH; Boomsma, DI; Vink, JM; Cornes, BK; Martin, NG; Skytthe, A; Kyvik, KO; ... de Geus, EJ; + view all (2006) Genetic influences on exercise participation in 37,051 twin pairs from seven countries. PLoS One , 1 , Article e22. 10.1371/journal.pone.0000022. Green open access

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Abstract

Background A sedentary lifestyle remains a major threat to health in contemporary societies. To get more insight in the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in exercise participation, twin samples from seven countries participating in the GenomEUtwin project were used. Methodology Self-reported data on leisure time exercise behavior from Australia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and United Kingdom were used to create a comparable index of exercise participation in each country (60 minutes weekly at a minimum intensity of four metabolic equivalents). Principal Findings Modest geographical variation in exercise participation was revealed in 85,198 subjects, aged 19–40 years. Modeling of monozygotic and dizygotic twin resemblance showed that genetic effects play an important role in explaining individual differences in exercise participation in each country. Shared environmental effects played no role except for Norwegian males. Heritability of exercise participation in males and females was similar and ranged from 48% to 71% (excluding Norwegian males). Conclusions Genetic variation is important in individual exercise behavior and may involve genes influencing the acute mood effects of exercise, high exercise ability, high weight loss ability, and personality. This collaborative study suggests that attempts to find genes influencing exercise participation can pool exercise data across multiple countries and different instruments.

Type: Article
Title: Genetic influences on exercise participation in 37,051 twin pairs from seven countries
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000022
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000022
Language: English
Additional information: © 2006 Stubbe et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. PMCID: PMC1762341
Keywords: Adult, Behavior, Europe, Exercise, Female, Genetics, Behavioral, Humans, Life Style, Male, Models, Genetic, Patient Participation, Registries, Twins, Dizygotic, Twins, Monozygotic, Young Adult
UCL classification: UCL
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1417728
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