High heritability for a composite index of children's activity level measures

Despite the high heritability of children's activity level, which forms part of the core symptom domain of hyperactivity-impulsivity within attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), there has only been a limited success with identifying candidate genes involved in its etiology. This may reflect a lack of understanding about the different measures used to define activity level across studies. We aimed to study the genetic and environmental etiology across three measures of activity level: parent and teacher ratings of hyperactivity-impulsivity and actigraph measurements, within a population-based sample of 463 7-9 year old twin pairs. We further examined ways in which the three measures could be combined for future molecular studies. Phenotypic correlations across measures were modest, but a common underlying phenotypic factor was highly heritable (92%); as was a simple aggregation of all three measurements (77%). This suggests that distilling what is common to all three measures may be a good method for generating a quantitative trait suitable for molecular studies of activity level in children. The high heritabilities found are encouraging in this respect.