Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
12614223
TITLE
Relative importance of female-specific and non-female-specific effects on variation in iron stores between women.
ABSTRACT
Women have lower iron stores than men because of iron loss during their reproductive years. However, variation between women could result from differences in iron loss, aspects of iron homeostasis common to men and women, or a combination of both. We compared the effects of age, menopause, menstrual blood loss and the number of pregnancies (sex-specific factors), and the effects of genetic variation, on markers of iron stores. We assessed how much the same genes or other familial factors influence iron status in both men and women. Data from 2,039 female twins who participated in studies of reproductive health and iron status were used to estimate the proportions of variation that could be ascribed to genes, environment and measured factors. Significant effects of age, menopausal status and magnitude of menstrual blood loss were demonstrated, accounting for up to 18% of variance in serum ferritin in this sample, but number of children had no significant effect. Genetic effects were more than twice as great as sex-specific effects. The within-pair similarity of ferritin values in dizygotic female twin pairs was greater than for dizygotic opposite-sex pairs, but this difference was not quite significant, consistent with a minor role for sex-specific factors; and the opposite-sex within-pair differences did not diminish significantly with age. We conclude that the contribution of genetic differences between women to variation in iron stores outweighs the comparatively small effects of interindividual variation in iron loss through variation in menstruation and number of pregnancies.
DATE PUBLISHED
2003 Mar
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
pubmed 2003/03/05 04:00
medline 2003/05/22 05:00
entrez 2003/03/05 04:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Whitfield JB Whitfield John B JB Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, Australia. John.Whitfield@email.cs.nsw.gov.au
Treloar S Treloar Susan S
Zhu G Zhu Gu G
Powell LW Powell Lawrie W LW
Martin NG Martin Nicholas G NG
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 120
ISSUE: 5
TITLE: British journal of haematology
ISOABBREVIATION: Br. J. Haematol.
YEAR: 2003
MONTH: Mar
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 0007-1048
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Br J Haematol
COUNTRY: England
ISSNLINKING: 0007-1048
NLMUNIQUEID: 0372544
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GRANTID AGENCY COUNTRY
AA07535 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA07728 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging metabolism
Female metabolism
Ferritins blood
Genotype blood
Histocompatibility Antigens Class I genetics
Humans genetics
Iron metabolism
Male metabolism
Membrane Proteins genetics
Menopause metabolism
Menstruation metabolism
Middle Aged metabolism
Sex Characteristics metabolism
Transferrin analysis
Twins, Dizygotic analysis
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
REGISTRYNUMBER NAMEOFSUBSTANCE
0 HFE protein, human
0 Histocompatibility Antigens Class I
0 Membrane Proteins
0 Transferrin
9007-73-2 Ferritins
E1UOL152H7 Iron
OTHER ID's