Table 4.

Heritability estimates of metabolic syndrome and its individual components of the Jackson Heart Study Participants (n=1636)

	Heritability estimate	SE	p Value	Proportion of variation explained by covariates
Metabolic syndrome*	0.32	0.08	<0.0001	0.10†
Fasting plasma glucose‡§	0.14	0.06	<0.01	0.33¶
Waist circumference‡	0.45	0.06	<0.0001	0.08†
High-density lipoprotein cholesterol‡	0.43	0.07	<0.0001	0.11¶
Fasting triglyceride‡§	0.42	0.05	<0.0001	0.10¶
Systolic blood pressure‡	0.16	0.07	<0.001	0.22¶
Diastolic blood pressure‡	0.15	0.05	<0.01	0.09¶

*Treated as a discrete trait, and defined as having at least three of the following five components: (1) abdominal obesity or large waist circumference (>102 cm for men and >88 cm for women); (2) hypertriglyceridaemia (fasting plasma triglyceride concentration ≥150 mg/dL or on drug treatment); (3) low HDL cholesterol levels (<40 mg/dL for men and < 50 mg/dL in women or on drug treatment); (4) elevated blood pressure (≥130 mm Hg systolic or ≥85 mm Hg diastolic or on drug treatment); or (5) IFG (110 mg/dL or on drug treatment).

†Covariates are age, sex, education, smoking status, alcohol intake, physical activity.

‡Treated as a continuous trait.

§Log transformed.

¶Covariates are age, sex, education, smoking status, alcohol intake, physical activity and respective medication.

HDL, high-density lipoprotein; IFG, impaired fasting glucose.