Genetic and environmental influences on level of habitual physical activity and exercise participation

In order to quantify genetic and environmental determinants of physical activity level, 1,610 subjects from 375 families who lived in the greater Québec city area completed a three-day activity record in 1978-1981. Level of habitual physical activity, which includes all the usual activities of life, and exercise participation, which includes activities requiring at least five times the resting oxygen consumption and more, were derived from this record. Familial correlations were computed in several pairs of biologic relatives and relatives by adoption after adjustment for the effects of age, sex, physical fitness, body mass index, and socioeconomic status, and analyzed with a model of path analysis that allows the separation of the transmissible effect between generations (t2) into genetic (h2) and cultural (b2) components of inheritance. The transmission was found to be statistically significant, but was accounted for by genetic factors for level of habitual physical activity (t2 = h2 = 29%), and by cultural factors for exercise participation (t2 = b2 = 12%). Although non-transmissible environmental factors remain the major determinants of these two physical activity indicators in this population, the results suggest that children can acquire from their parents certain customs regarding exercise behavior and that the propensity toward being spontaneously active could be partly influenced by the genotype.