title: Heritabilities of ocular biometrical traits in two croatian isolates with extended pedigrees.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the effects of body stature and years of education, in addition to age and sex, on six oculometric traits and to estimate the heritabilities of these quantitative traits in two Croatian cross-population studies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Adult subjects living on the two Croatian islands of Vis and Korcula were recruited for a large epidemiologic and genetic study that included eye biometry, keratometry, and autorefraction. Effects and heritabilities were estimated by using general linear mixed models for axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), corneal curvature (CC), corneal thickness (CT), lens thickness (LT), and spherical equivalent refraction (SER). Both cohorts were genotyped with dense SNP arrays, allowing the use of kinship coefficients derived from genotypic data (realized kinship) rather than from pedigree information (expected kinship).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Across cohorts, body mass index (BMI) did not consistently influence any of the ocular traits adjusted for age and/or sex, whereas height and years in education (YrEd) did, explaining up to an additional 5% of the variance (in CC). CT was the trait least influenced by covariates. Estimated heritabilities in Vis and Korcula, respectively, were 84% and 52% for CC, 75% and 71% for CT, 37% and 32% for LT, 59% and 45% for ACD, 37% and 74% for AL, and 0% and 17% for SER.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  While heritabilities of CT and CC seemed uniformly high across studies of Caucasian datasets, estimates for SER varied widely and were at the lower end of the spectrum of published observations in our study.
authors.affiliation: MRC (Medical Research Council) Human Genetics Unit, IGMM (Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine), Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. v.vitart@hgu.mrc.ac.uk
authors.forename: Veronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vitart
authors.forename: Goran
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bencić
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hayward
authors.forename: Jelena Skunca
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Herman
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huffman
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: Kajo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bućan
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zgaga
authors.forename: Ivana
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kolcić
authors.forename: Ozren
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Polasek
authors.forename: Harry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.forename: Zoran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Vatavuk
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rudan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000867:Anterior Chamber / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D001699:Biometry; D001827:Body Height / Q000502:physiology; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology; D003315:Cornea / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D017523:Croatia; D005123:Eye / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D007908:Lens, Crystalline / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010375:Pedigree; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D012029:Refraction, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult