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Relative roles of heredity and physical activity in adolescence and adulthood on blood pressure

¹Unit for Sports and Exercise Medicine, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Helsinki, 00250 Helsinki; ²Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki; ³Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Kuopio University Hospital, 70211 Kuopio, Finland; and ⁴Department of Physical Therapy, and ⁵Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2G4

Submitted 10 December 2003 ; accepted in final form 10 May 2004

Part of the association between physical activity and low blood pressure (BP) may be a consequence of genetic selection. We investigated the association of genetic factors and physical activity in adolescence and adulthood with BP. BP was measured with a Finapres device in 71 monozygotic and 104 dizygotic male twin pairs using no antihypertensive medication. Subjects' mean age was 50.4 yr (range 40–72 yr). Subjects were interviewed about their lifetime exercise and other health habits. Exercise was classified as aerobic, power, or other, and these were further divided into adolescence (12–20 yr of age), the previous year, and lifetime. Genetic modeling was conducted to estimate genetic and environmental components of variance of systolic and diastolic BP. Aerobic exercise in adolescence and high-intensity aerobic exercise throughout the lifetime were associated with low diastolic BP in adulthood. Of the variance in diastolic BP, genetic factors accounted for 35% and aerobic exercise in adolescence for 5%. For systolic BP, genetic factors accounted for 39% of the variance. In turn, genetic factors accounted for 44% of the variance in aerobic exercise in adolescence. The genetic factors in part accounting for the variance in diastolic BP and those in part accounting for variance in aerobic exercise in adolescence were correlated. The association between aerobic exercise in adolescence and low diastolic BP in adulthood is a new finding, as is the observation that the factors partly share the same genes.

adolescents; exercise; twins; hypertension

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