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Genetic and environmental influences on height from infancy to early adulthood: An individual-based pooled analysis of 45 twin cohorts

Jelenkovic, A; Sund, R; Hur, YM; Yokoyama, Y; Hjelmborg, JV; Möller, S; Honda, C; ... Silventoinen, K; + view all (2016) Genetic and environmental influences on height from infancy to early adulthood: An individual-based pooled analysis of 45 twin cohorts. Scientific Reports , 6 , Article 28496. 10.1038/srep28496. Green open access

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Abstract

Height variation is known to be determined by both genetic and environmental factors, but a systematic description of how their influences differ by sex, age and global regions is lacking. We conducted an individual-based pooled analysis of 45 twin cohorts from 20 countries, including 180,520 paired measurements at ages 1-19 years. The proportion of height variation explained by shared environmental factors was greatest in early childhood, but these effects remained present until early adulthood. Accordingly, the relative genetic contribution increased with age and was greatest in adolescence (up to 0.83 in boys and 0.76 in girls). Comparing geographic-cultural regions (Europe, North-America and Australia, and East-Asia), genetic variance was greatest in North-America and Australia and lowest in East-Asia, but the relative proportion of genetic variation was roughly similar across these regions. Our findings provide further insights into height variation during childhood and adolescence in populations representing different ethnicities and exposed to different environments.

Type: Article
Title: Genetic and environmental influences on height from infancy to early adulthood: An individual-based pooled analysis of 45 twin cohorts
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/srep28496
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep28496
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1502680
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