FAMILIAL RESEMBLANCE FOR ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS AND RELATIVE FATDISTRIBUTION AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICANS

Obesity has emerged as a major public health problem in the African-Am erican community and its determinants are poorly understood, The purpo se of this study was to examine familial patterns of the degree of hea viness and of regional fat deposits. Seven anthropometric measurements (height, weight, body mass index [BMI], waist and hip circumferences, waist-to-hip ratio and arm circumferences) were examined in a populat ion sample of African-American nuclear families recruited from the Chi cago area, Participants included 162 parent pairs and 114 sets of sibl ings (a total of 295 sons and daughters), Adjustments to correct for t he effect of age and sex were performed separately for parents and sib lings and the residuals were transformed to normalized z-scores to cal culate intraclass correlations between family members. With the except ion of waist-to-hip ratio, all variables showed positive familial rese mblance, although the degree and level of statistical significance var ied by type of relationship, Significant familial resemblance was obse rved for peripheral fat deposit, as measured by hip and arm circumfere nces (range: 0.04 for spouse pairs to 0.42 for daughter pairs), and ob esity, as measured by BMI (range: 0.12 for spouses to 0.33 for mother- daughter comparison), Significant sex and generation differences were observed for height and hip, We conclude that African Americans exhibi t significant familial resemblance for stature, degree of heaviness an d regional fat deposits, Understanding the relative contributions of s hared genes and shared environmental factors to the observed familial patterns could yield important insights into the origins of obesity in this high risk population.