Individual differences in puberty onset in girls: Bayesian estimation of heritabilities and genetic correlations

Stéphanie M. van den Berg*, Adi Setiawan, Meike Bartels, Tinca J.C. Polderman, Aad W. van der Vaart, Dorret I. Boomsma

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

53 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We report heritabilities for individual differences in female pubertal development at the age of 12. Tanner data on breast and pubic hair development in girls and data on menarche were obtained from a total of 184 pairs of monozygotic and dizygotic twins. Genetic correlations were estimated to determine to what extent the same genes are involved in different aspects of physical development in puberty. A Bayesian estimation approach was taken, using Markovchain Monte Carlo simulation to estimate model parameters. All three phenotypes were to a significant extent heritable and showed high genetic correlations, suggesting that a common set of genes is involved in the timing of puberty in general. However, gonadarche (menarche and breast development) and adrenarche (pubic hair) are affected by different environmental factors, which does not support the three phenotypes to be regarded as indicators of a unitary physiological factor.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)261-270
Number of pages10
JournalBehavior genetics
Volume36
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2006
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Bayesian statistics
  • Genetic correlation
  • MCMC
  • Menarche
  • Puberty
  • Tanner

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