Changes in weight and cardiovascular disease risk factors in monozygotic twins: The healthy twin study

Abstract

We aimed to assess the non-genetic contribution to the associations between the change in weight and changes in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. This analysis included 194 Korean monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs (116 men, 272 women; mean age, 38.5 ± 6.8 years) who were first examined for weight and CVD risk factors (blood pressure (BP), glucose, total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL)) between December 2005 and December 2008, and returned for a repeat examination after 2.7 ± 0.9 years. The within-pair correlations were 0.21 for the change in weight and 0.05-0.42 for the changes in CVD risk factors. Bivariate analyses showed significant environmental correlations shared between the change in weight and the changes in CVD risk factors (p