Familial Aggregation and Heritability for Cardiovascular Risk Factors: A Family Based Study in Punjab, India (Report‪)‬

1. INTRODUCTION There is much epidemiological evidence that environmental cofactors and anthropometric characteristics are directly and consistently correlated with cardiovascular diseases in developing countries [1-7]. It has been reported that almost 30% of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases are accounted by genetic heritability and at least approximately 70% of risk factors are of familial in nature [8-13]. However, many authors have contradicted that what extent to which that observed familial aggregation on both systolic and diastolic is due to genetic or environmental reason. Some authors have argued that familial aggregation on diastolic blood pressure is more than systolic blood pressure or vice versa [14]. However, in India the pattern of risk factors for cardiovascular diseases are different to cut across the cultural patterns and geographic regions. Therefore, in Indian context the paucity of family based information and complex etiology of this disease made it difficult for understanding how these factors contribute to the cardiovascular diseases. Hence, the major purpose of this study was to investigate the familial aggregation of blood pressures with respect to certain anthropometric traits and to determine the relative roles of heredity in the etiology of SBP and DBP in a sample of families with three generations such as offspring, parent and grandparent in Punjab, a north Indian state. Our working hypotheses were that there is familial aggregation of blood pressure in the studied families and the association of blood pressure in first degree relatives is more than spouse pairs.