Circulating Fatty Acid Compositions And Fasting Lipid Profiles In Chinese Healthy Adolescent Twins

Circulating fatty acid compositions, as biomarkers of dietary fat quality, correlate with fasting lipid profiles, however, little is known about the associations in healthy adolescents and whether genetic and environmental factors modify these associations.We examined the relationship between blood levels of fatty acids and fasting lipid profile, and tested the influences of genetic and environmental factors on the associations in a group of healthy Chinese adolescent twins. We included 311 pairs of adolescent twins aged 7-15 from East China in the present study. Circulating fatty acid compositions were analyzed by gas chromatography. Spearmen correlation analysis and linear mixed model regression analysis were applied to examine the relations of circulating fatty acid compositions with fasting lipid profiles.After adjusted for age,waist-to-height ratio, zygosity, puberty, physical activity and puberty, blood levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), n3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) and total PUFA were inversely related to fasting triglyceride (TG) concentrations in both males and females. And these association were further confirmed in the within-pair analyses of monozygotic (MZ) twins, which were inherently controlled for shared genetic and environmental factors. Circulating fatty acid composition were not associated with total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) or high density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). We concluded that higher proportions of PUFA, especially DHA, in blood were associated with lower fasting TG concentrations in healthy Chinese adolescent twins. And the associations were independent of shared genetic and environmental factors.