1. ¹Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2. ²Departments of Psychiatry and Human Genetics, Virginia Institute for Psychiatry and Behavioral Genetics, Medical College of Virginia of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VI, USA
3. ³Section Molecular Epidemiology, Sylvius Laboratory, Leiden Universitary Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands

Correspondence: Dr JM Vink, Dept of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel: +31 20 4448787; Fax: +31 20 4448832; E-mail: jm.vink@psy.vu.nl

Received 17 November 2003; Revised 31 March 2004; Accepted 1 April 2004; Published online 1 June 2004.

Abstract

The heritability of smoking initiation (SI) and number of cigarettes smoked (NC) was determined in 3657 Dutch twin pairs. For SI a heritability of 36% was found and for NC of 51%. Both SI and NC were also significantly influenced by environmental factors shared by family members. The etiological factors that influence these traits partly overlap. Linkage analyses were performed on data of 536 DZ twins and siblings from 192 families, forming 592 sibling pairs. Results suggested QTLs on chromosome 6 (LOD=3.05) and chromosome 14 (LOD=1.66) for SI and on chromosome 3 (LOD=1.98) for NC. Strikingly, on chromosome 10 a peak was found in the same region for both SI (LOD=1.92) and for NC (LOD=2.29) which may partly explain the overlapping etiological factors for SI and NC.