Heritability of objectively assessed daily physical activity and sedentary behavior

Abstract

Background: Twin and family studies that estimated the heritability of daily physical activity have been limited by poor measurement quality and a small sample size.Objective: We examined the heritability of daily physical activity and sedentary behavior assessed objectively by using combined heart rate and movement sensing in a large twin study.Design: Physical activity traits were assessed in daily life for a mean (±SD) 6.7 ± 1.1 d in 1654 twins from 420 monozygotic and 352 dizygotic same-sex twin pairs aged 56.3 ± 10.4 y with body mass index (in kg/m2) of 26.1 ± 4.8. We estimated the average daily movement, physical activity energy expenditure, and time spent in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity and sedentary behavior from heart rate and acceleration data. We used structural equation modeling to examine the contribution of additive genetic, shared environmental, and unique environmental factors to between-individual variation in traits.Results: Additive genetic factors (ie, heritability) explained 47% of the variance in physical activity energy expenditure (95% CI: 23%, 53%) and time spent in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (95% CI: 29%, 54%), 35% of the variance in acceleration of the trunk (95% CI: 0%, 44%), and 31% of the variance in the time spent in sedentary behavior (95% CI: 9%, 51%). The remaining variance was predominantly explained by unique environmental factors and random error, whereas shared environmental factors played only a marginal role for all traits with a range of 0–15%.Conclusions: The between-individual variation in daily physical activity and sedentary behavior is mainly a result of environmental influences. Nevertheless, genetic factors explain up to one-half of the variance, suggesting that innate biological processes may be driving some of our daily physical activity.

Heritability and genetic etiology of habitual physical activity: a twin study with objective measures

“…This is lower than the 78 % observed earlier by Joosen et al , but is congruent with the 55 % observed in a twin study with subjective (Mustelin et al 2009) measures of physical activity, but higher than the 37 % of the twin study with objective measurements (den Hoed et al 2013). In concordance with earlier studies, the present study suggests that the residual variance (43 %) is likely accounted for by unique environmental factors (AE model) (Cai et al 2006;Joosen et al 2005;Mustelin et al 2009;den Hoed et al 2013). However, a role for common environmental factors (ACE model) cannot be excluded, as approximately 262 twin pairs are required to detect such an effect with an additive genetic effect of 60 %, a confidence level of 0.05 and a power of 80 % (Visscher et al 2008).…”

“…The familial resemblance of HPA could thus also result from common environmental factors. At childhood, the variance may best be explained by (common and unique) environmental factors (Fisher et al 2010), whereas later in life the influence of common environmental factors has disappeared and genetic factors become more important (den Hoed et al 2013).…”

“…Comparable figures for an European population showed about 50 % achieving the activity guidelines (den Hoed et al 2013). This may be explained by an intrinsic biological component in physical activity regulation.…”

“…This may be explained by an intrinsic biological component in physical activity regulation. In fact, evidence from twin studies with objective measures of physical activity suggests a minor genetic effect in children (Fisher et al 2010), a high level of heritability (h 2 = 78 %) in young adults , whereas a heritability of 35 % was estimated in a large sample of women ranging from 18 to 80 years of age (den Hoed et al 2013). Studies aiming to identify genetic variants that are associated with objective measures of HPA are scarce (Cai et al 2006).…”

Patterns and correlates of physical activity among middle-aged employees: A population-based, cross-sectional study

“…However, when interpreting these effect sizes it has to be taken into account that physical activity is a complex behaviour related to other numerous health-related, psychological, behavioural, social, cultural and environmental factors [10,36,37]. Moreover, in a recent study, up to one half of the physical activity variance was attributed to genetic factors [38]. Therefore, it would be unreasonable to expect that the set of independent variables used in our study could account for a much higher amount of the total physical activity variance.…”