Heritabilities of clinical chemical traits in chimpanzees

Clinical chemical measures are commonly used biomarkers of health status in nonhuman primates and may also serve as important covariates or outcome variables in experimental protocols. There is a considerable range of normal variation in most clinical chemical traits and the determinants of this variation have been relatively unexplored in nonhuman primates used as animal models in biomedical research. This study assesses the evidence for genetic determinants of normal variation in nine clinical chemical traits (blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, potassium, sodium, CO₂, glucose, albumin, globulin, and total cholesterol concentrations) in an important animal model, the chimpanzee. We found significant moderate heritabilities for potassium, sodium, albumin, globulin, and total cholesterol. The results provide information useful for addressing issues in both genetic management and experimental research.