Associations between insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), IGF-binding protein-1, insulin and other metabolic measures after controlling for genetic influences: results from middle-aged and elderly monozygotic twins

It has previously been shown that the serum levels of insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I), IGF-binding protein-1 (IGFBP-1), and insulin are influenced by genetic effects to various degrees. From a clinical and preventive point of view, however, it is important to identify potentially modifiable non-genetic factors influencing the levels of these measures. Because monozygotic twin pairs share the same genetic background, differences in phenotypic levels within monozygotic twin pairs are believed to be due to non-genetic influences. Accordingly, the associations between intrapair differences in one phenotype and intrapair differences in another phenotype are also due to non-genetic influences. The present sample of 97 pairs of monozygotic twins from the population-based Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA) provided the opportunity to assess non-genetic influences on the levels of IGF-I, IGFBP-1, and insulin. Several metabolic measures were found to account for the variation of IGF-I, IGFBP-1, and insulin after controlling for the genetic influences. IGFBP-1 and glucose were significant predictors for the levels of IGF-I. IGFBP-1 and glucose together explained about one quarter of the non-genetic variation of IGF-I. However, when IGFBP-1 was dropped from the regression model, insulin was the only independent predictor of IGF-I, and explained about 19% of the non-genetic variation for IGF-I. For IGFBP-1, insulin and IGF-I were the significant non-genetic predictors. Insulin and IGF-I explained about 28 and 8% respectively of the non-genetic variation for IGFBP-1, while for insulin, IGF-I, triglycerides, body height, glucose, and body mass index (BMI) explained approximately 20, 12, 6, 5 and 5% respectively of the non-genetic variation. Journal of Endocrinology (1997) 153, 251–257