C-reactive protein in adolescent twins: patterns and relationship to adiposity.

Context: Elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) is a marker of cardiovascular risk in adults. Patterns and determinants of CRP in adolescents have not been well described.

Objective: This study aimed to determine how CRP varies by age, gender, Tanner stage, and body fat composition in rural Chinese adolescents and to what degree adiposity-CRP associations are attributable to shared genetic and environmental factors.

Gender-specific association of sleep duration with blood pressure in rural Chinese adults.

Background: There are limited data about the role of gender on the relationship between sleep duration and blood pressure (BP) from rural populations.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional rural population-based study. This report includes 1033 men and 783 women aged 18-65 years from a cohort of twins enrolled in Anhui, China, between 2005 and 2008.

The patterns of glucose tolerance and insulin resistance among rural Chinese twin children, adolescents, and young adults.

Pubertal insulin resistance (IR) is well recognized; but little data are available for glucose and insulin pattern from a large, unselected lean population. This report describes the age- and sex-specific distributions of glucose tolerance and IR in a rural Chinese twin population. This report includes 4488 subjects aged 6 to 24 years.

Percent fat mass is inversely associated with bone mass and hip geometry in rural Chinese adolescents.

This study was an attempt to examine the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between percent fat mass (PFM) and bone parameters, especially hip geometry, among 786 males and 618 females aged 13 to 21 years from a Chinese twin cohort. PFM, bone area (BA), bone mineral content (BMC), cross-sectional area (CSA), and section modulus (SM) were obtained by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Multiple linear regression models were used to assess the PFM-bone relationships.

Association of plasma leptin concentrations with adiposity measurements in rural Chinese adolescents.

Context: There is evidence that leptin is involved in the etiology of obesity-related cardiovascular disease in adults. This raises the question of whether leptin levels in adolescence are indicative of adiposity-related cardiovascular risk.

Objective: This study investigated gender-specific patterns of plasma leptin during adolescence, assessed which adiposity measurements are most strongly associated with plasma leptin, and estimated to what degree leptin-adiposity associations are influenced by genetic factors.