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Twin Studies of Human Obesity
Published in Claude Bouchard, The Genetics of Obesity, 2020
Joanne M. Meyer, Albert J. Stunkard
The methods for analyzing twin data described above have important limitations. There exist a number of possible genotypic and environmental effects which the classical twin design cannot detect, but which nonetheless may result in biasing heritability estimates derived from such a design. For example, heritability estimates will be biased upward in the presence of genotype × environment correlations (such as obesity-prone individuals being reared in homes with plentiful fatty foods) and genotype × environment interactions (such as particular genotypes being more sensitive to high-fat diets). Further, special MZ twin environments (where MZ twins are treated more similarly than DZ twins) will also increase MZ intrapair correlations and, thus, result in an overestimate of heritability. In contrast, assortative mating (like marrying like) may produce spurious evidence for common environmental influences on obesity and at the same time reduce heritability estimates.
The “Obesity Epidemic” and its Correlates
Published in Roy J. Shephard, Obesity: A Kinesiologist’s Perspective, 2018
Assortative mating. Assortative mating implies that some factor other than chance leads to the pairing of a couple. For example, positive assortative mating could occur with the pairing of two obese individuals; this would increase the likelihood of the birth of offspring who were genetically predisposed to obesity [30], as well as establishing a household where sedentary living and overeating were the norm.
The Intergenerational Transmission of Addiction and Recovery
Published in Jacqueline Wallen, Addiction in Human Development, 2014
As for other traits that seem to be intergenerationaily transmitted along with alcoholism, it is not clear whether or not the link between psychiatric disorders and alcoholism reflects primarily genetic or primarily environmental factors, or both. Penick points out that either genetic or environmental influences may be enhanced by the effects of assortive mating. In each generation, individuals with good mental health tend to seek out and marry other individuals with good mental health. Conversely, individuals with poor mental health, either because of mental illness, substance abuse, or both, tend to marry one another, increasing the risk that their children will suffer from genetically transmitted mental health and substance abuse problems. At the same time, individuals with mental health problems may be less effective parents and this, in itself, could contribute to higher rates of mental health problems and substance abuse problems in their offspring. The family presented in Figure 1 is one in which assortive mating has affected several generations.
Human height: a model common complex trait
Published in Annals of Human Biology, 2023
Mitchell Conery, Struan F. A. Grant
An issue always worth considering when discussing any GWAS results is the effect of assortative mating. A shortcoming of Yengo et al.’s work is that they did not do so. There is an extensive literature documenting human assortative mating in general (Burgess and Wallin 1943; Price and Vandenberg 1980; Mascie-Taylor 1989; McLeod 1995; Allison et al. 1996; Du Fort et al. 1998; Maes et al. 1998; Hippisley-Cox et al. 2002; Stimpson and Peek 2005; Jurj et al. 2006; Meyler et al. 2007; Di Castelnuovo et al. 2009; Alford et al. 2011; Ask et al. 2012; Peyrot et al. 2016; Luo S 2017; Jeong and Cho 2018; Horwitz et al. 2023) and specifically, on the basis of height (Stulp et al. 2017; Torvik et al. 2022). Assortative mating can inflate SNP-based heritability estimates. For example, an analysis of ∼335,000 individuals of British ancestry found that assortative mating inflated the heritability of height by 14–23% (Border et al. 2022). However, that same study also demonstrated that sufficient sample sizes should cause the heritability estimates derived from the restricted maximum likelihood approach employed by Yengo et al. (Yang J et al. 2011, 2012) to converge to the true SNP-based heritability. It is plausible that the large sample size of this most recent GWAS is sufficient to ensure such convergence.
Familial genetic and environmental risk profile and high blood pressure event: a prospective cohort of cardio-metabolic and genetic study
Published in Blood Pressure, 2021
Goodarz Kolifarhood, Maryam S. Daneshpour, Asiyeh Sadat Zahedi, Nasim Khosravi, Bahareh Sedaghati-Khayat, Kamran Guity, Saeid Rasekhi Dehkordi, Mahmoud Amiri Roudbar, Forough Ghanbari, Farzad Hadaegh, Fereidoun Azizi, Mahdi Akbarzadeh, Siamak Sabour
Although, ancient lifestyles, such as a salty diet and adapting a sedentary lifestyle, were reported as most frequent environmental risk factors attributed to high blood pressure in Iranian families, there was no attempts to examine familial impacts of genetic and metabolic risk factors on hypertension [19,20]. In this study, we found a positive correlation between family member’s SBP, DBP, BMI and WC, so that the correlations were different by class of relationship and it was lowest in spouses. However, our findings were in contrast to assortative mating theory [21]. Accordingly, results of previous study on Iranian families showed association between overweight and obesity in women with their spouses' risk for cardiovascular diseases regardless to the effect of the spouse’ own risk factors [22]. Nevertheless, higher correlations of blood pressure traits as well as anthropometric predictors between mother-offspring and sister-sister in our study is likely emphasised on key role of women to adapt or avoid of risky lifestyle habits, diet, cultural belief or psychosocial stressors among family members over time [23].
Circadian preference and relationship satisfaction among three types of couples
Published in Chronobiology International, 2019
Juan F. Díaz-Morales, Zaida Parra-Robledo, Cristina Escribano
For decades, psychological research has been focused on determining if there is a systematic pattern in human mate selection or assortative mating. Research on assortative mating has typically been framed in terms of similarity (or positive assortment) versus complementarity (or negative assortment) of partners’ characteristics. Overall, there is consistent evidence for similarity but very little evidence for differences. The degree of similarity observed depends on the particular individual-difference domain studied, with romantic partners showing strong similarity in age, political and religious attitudes; moderate similarity in education, general intelligence, and values; and little or no similarity in personality characteristics (Rammstedt and Schupp 2008).