Familial influences on heart rate, blood pressure, and self-report anxiety responses to stress: results from 100 twin pairs.

Two hundred healthy adolescent to middle-aged individuals (12-44 years, M = 20 years) were tested in a standardized stress protocol. These individuals comprised 20 monozygotic female, 20 monozygotic male, 20 same-sex dizygotic female, 20 same-sex dizygotic male, and 20 opposite-sex dizygotic twin pairs. Familial influences on heart rate, blood pressure, and self-report anxiety responses to four different kinds of stressors (Visual-Verbal Test for Conceptual Thought, mental arithmetic, isometric handgrip, cold pressor) were assessed using biometrical genetic model fitting. Evidence of significant genetic effects on resting heart rate and blood pressure was obtained, providing heritability estimates of .65, .63, and .58 for resting heart rate and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, respectively. Cardiovascular reactivity to the Visual-Verbal Test, mental arithmetic, and the cold pressor test appeared to be primarily influenced by genetic and idiosyncratic (nonfamilial) environmental factors, whereas reactivity to handgrip was more related to effects of the family environment. The results of multivariate model fitting suggested that the genetic effects on reactivity were relatively independent of those affecting resting heart rate and blood pressure and that there was significant overlap of genetic influences on heart rate and blood pressure responses to the two active coping tasks.