1. Heritability of central corneal thickness in the children: The Guangzhou Twin Eye Study
2. Yingfeng Zheng, Guofu Huang, Jian Zhang, Qiuxia Yin, Bin Liu, Mingguang He
3. State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
4.Purpose:To assess the heritability of central corneal thickness in Chinese children using a class twin study.
5. Methods: Twins aged 8 to 16 years were recruited from Guangzhou Twin Registry. Pachymetry data was obtained using a Pentacam imaging system by the same operator. Heritability was assessed by structural variance component genetic modeling after adjusting for age and gender using Mx software.
6. Results: 297 monozygotic (MZ) and 152 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs were available for the analysis. The correlation coefficient was greater in MZ twin pairs (r=0.91) than in DZ twin pairs (r=0.51). A sex-limitation model combining additive genetic, common environmental and unique environmental factors produced the best fit for the data. Heritability estimates for CCT were 0.67 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.34 to 0.89] and 0.64 (95% CI: 0.32 to 0.92) in male and female respectively.
7. Conclusion:Genetic effects are important for CCT, explaining 67 percent and 64 percent of the variation in male and female respectively. The sex limitation ACE model (additive genetic, common environmental, and unique environmental components) provided the best-fit genetic model.
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