Abstract:

Objective〓〖WTBZ〗To calculate the heritability of the refractive error serves as a continuous quantitative variable. 〖WTHZ〗Method〓〖WTBZ〗A large Irish family was used as a random sample. Heritability was calculated by mid-parent-offspring regression, parent-offspring regression and sequential oligogene linkage analysis routine (SOLAR) methods. The original refractive data and the data obtained after normality-transformation were separately calculated. 〖WTHZ〗Result〓〖WTBZ〗In total we got 15 pairs numbers for mid-parent-offspring regression, 23 pairs for parent-offspring regression, and 137 numbers for SOLAR calculation. Heritabilities in the original refractive data and transformed data from the three methods were as follows: 0.56 and 0.60 for mid-parent-offspring regression (Standard Error: 0.16 and 0.23), 0.14 and 0.28 for parent-offspring regression (Standard Error: 0.11 and 0.17), and 0.51 and 0.57 for SOLAR (Standard Error: 0.16 and 0.16). Age served as a covariate which had no significant result. 〖WTHZ〗Conclusion〓〖WTBZ〗The heritability of the refractive error in our sample was 0.5-0.6, which means that genetic factors accounted for about half of the efficiency for refractive error. We think that heritability calculated by mid-parent-offspring regression and SOLAR is more reliable than that calculated by parentoffspring regression.

Key words: Heritability, Refractive errors, Refraction ocular, Regresson analysis, Sequence analysis