American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on May 26, 2006
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwj188
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1 Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; National Ageing Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Genetic and environmental influences on variation in balance performance were measured in 93 monozygous and 83 dizygous female twin pairs aged 21-82 years (mean age, 50.5 years) in Melbourne, Australia, between 1999 and 2003. The authors administered clinical (Lord's Balance Test and Step Test) and laboratory tests of static and dynamic balance from the Chattecx Balance System with and without distractor tasks. The authors conducted factor analysis and estimated genetic and environmental variance components and heritability (defined as additive genetic variance as a proportion of all variance, after adjustment for age) using a multivariate normal model with the statistical package FISHER. Three factors were identified and adjusted for age. Heritability was 46% (standard error (SE), 9) for the "sensory balance tests" factor and 30% (SE, 9) for the "static and dynamic perturbations" factor. For both factors, the remaining variance was attributed to unique environmental effects. There was no evidence that genetic factors influenced variation in the "dynamic weight shift tests" factor, with environmental effects shared by twins accounting for 38% (SE, 7) of variance. Neither genetic nor environmental proportions of variance differed significantly between twin subgroups by age (
Received August 9, 2005
Accepted February 13, 2006
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS
Genetic and Environmental Influences on Variation in Balance Performance among Female Twin Pairs Aged 21-82 Years
Natalie El Haber 1,
Keith D. Hill 2,
Anne-Marie T. Cassano 3,
Lynda M. Paton 3,
Robert J. MacInnis 4,
James S. Cui 5,
John L. Hopper 6,
and
John D. Wark 7 *
2 Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; National Ageing Research Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
3 Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
4 Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
5 Centre for Genetic Epidemiology, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
6 Centre for Genetic Epidemiology, School of Population Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
7 Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; Department of Medicine, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
John D. Wark, E-mail: jdwark{at}unimelb.edu.au
Abstract 
50/>50 years). An age-related decline in performance measures was found across the whole sample. These results imply that balance impairments may have a heritable element.
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