Familial correlations from genes and shared environment for urine, plasma, and intraerythrocytic sodium

Spouse-spouse, sib-sib, and parent-offspring correlations were calculated for urinary, plasma, and intracellular sodium levels on over 1,900 persons aged 3-86 years in 98 Utah kindreds. For 36 hours prior to their clinic visit, 31% of the sample was salt-loaded with salt tablets, while the rest followed their normal diet. For those on their normal diet, urine creatine-, age-, and sex-adjusted urinary sodium excretion from a timed 12-hour overnight sample showed similar and significant correlations between spouses (r = .29), sibs less than 20 years old (r = .38), and parent-offspring pairs for offspring less than 20 years old (r = .29). This contrasted with the lower correlations between sibs 20 years of age and older (r = .10) and parent-offspring pairs for offspring 20 years of age and older (r = .13), presumed to live in different households. Adult plasma sodium sib-sib (r = .13) and parent-offspring (r = .15) correlations were similar to the urinary sodium correlations, while the spouse-spouse (r = .48), the sib-sib (r = .64), and the parent-offspring (r = .63) correlations for those presumed to live in the same household nearly doubled. Intracellular sodium correlations for the adult sibs (r = .32) and offspring (r = .36) were over twice as large as for urinary or plasma sodium, although the spouse-spouse correlation (r = .37) remained large also.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)