RESUMO
Objective To assess the heritability of serum uric acid in adult,using the classic twin design.Methods Adult Twins were recruited from the Qingdao Twin Registry.Uric acid,height,weight were measured.Zygosity in all the same-sex twin pairs was determined by 16 polymorphic markers.Heritability was assessed by structural equation models,with age,gender and body mass index(BMI) included as covariates.Results In total,687 twin pairs were available for data analyses,including 420 pairs of monozygotic and 267 pairs of dizygotic twins.After logarithm transformed,uric acid in males ( 17.47±1.91 ) was significantly higher than in females ( 15.22±1.70,P＜0.0001 ).After adjustment on age,sex and BMI,intraclass correlations for uric acid were 0.70 for monozygotic twins and 0.40 for dizygotic twins.The sex-limitation AE model,combining additive genetic and unique environmental factors,could produce the best fit for the data.Heritability estimate for uric acid was 70.5% (95% CI:65.9-74.6),with the proportion of unique environmental effects as 29.5%(95%CI:25.4-34.2).Conclusion Additive genetic effects appeared to be the major contributor to the variation of uric acid in this twins sample being studied.