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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 May 28.
Published in final edited form as: Annu Rev Genet. 2013 Aug 22;47:75–95. doi: 10.1146/annurev-genet-111212-133258

Table 2.

Proportion of variance explained by genetic factors for a number of selected quantitative traits

Trait h2 pedigree design h2 GWAS hits h2 population design
Height 0.80 (65) 0.10 (41; 90) 0.45 (87; 91)
Body mass index 0.45 - 0.80 (62) 0.02 (68) 0.17 (91)
von Willebrand factor 0.66 - 0.75 (10; 53) 0.13 (66) 0.25 (91)
Bone mineral density 0.61 (2) 0.06 (16) 0.16 (89)
General intelligence
-Children (~12 years) 0.40 - 0.60 (4; 30) 0 (5) 0.22 - 0.64 (5)
-Adults 0.80 (30; 56) 0 (7) 0.40 - 0.50 (9)
Red blood cell phenotypes
-Haemoglobin concentration 0.84 (17) 0.02 (72)
-Sodium 0.50 (84) 0.02 (89) 0.16 (89)
Personality
-Neuroticism 0.13 - 0.58 (36) 0 (11) 0.06 (74)
-Extraversion 0.34 - 0.57 (36) 0 (11) 0.12 (74)

Table notes: heritability in the pedigree design is estimated by comparing expected and observed MZ and DZ twin pair resemblance; heritability from GWAS hits represents the total variation explained by all the SNPs that individually reached genome-wide significance in GWAS; heritability in the population design is estimated from the SNP-derived genetic similarity between pairs of not knowingly related individuals.