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Twins Research Australia: A New Paradigm for Driving Twin Research
- Kate Murphy, Janine Lam, Tessa Cutler, Jess Tyler, Lucas Calais-Ferreira, Shuai Li, Callie Little, Paulo Ferreira, Jeffrey M. Craig, Katrina J. Scurrah, John L. Hopper
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 22 / Issue 6 / December 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 November 2019, pp. 438-445
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Twins Research Australia (TRA) is a community of twins and researchers working on health research to benefit everyone, including twins. TRA leads multidisciplinary research through the application of twin and family study designs, with the aim of sustaining long-term twin research that, both now and in the future, gives back to the community. This article summarizes TRA’s recent achievements and future directions, including new methodologies addressing causation, linkage to health, economic and educational administrative datasets and to geospatial data to provide insight into health and disease. We also explain how TRA’s knowledge translation and exchange activities are key to communicating the impact of twin studies to twins and the wider community. Building researcher capability, providing registry resources and partnering with all key stakeholders, particularly the participants, are important for how TRA is advancing twin research to improve health outcomes for society. TRA provides researchers with open access to its vibrant volunteer membership of twins, higher order multiples (multiples) and families who are willing to consider participation in research. Established four decades ago, this resource facilitates and supports research across multiple stages and a breadth of health domains.
The CODATwins Project: The Current Status and Recent Findings of COllaborative Project of Development of Anthropometrical Measures in Twins
- K. Silventoinen, A. Jelenkovic, Y. Yokoyama, R. Sund, M. Sugawara, M. Tanaka, S. Matsumoto, L. H. Bogl, D. L. Freitas, J. A. Maia, J. v. B. Hjelmborg, S. Aaltonen, M. Piirtola, A. Latvala, L. Calais-Ferreira, V. C. Oliveira, P. H. Ferreira, F. Ji, F. Ning, Z. Pang, J. R. Ordoñana, J. F. Sánchez-Romera, L. Colodro-Conde, S. A. Burt, K. L. Klump, N. G. Martin, S. E. Medland, G. W. Montgomery, C. Kandler, T. A. McAdams, T. C. Eley, A. M. Gregory, K. J. Saudino, L. Dubois, M. Boivin, M. Brendgen, G. Dionne, F. Vitaro, A. D. Tarnoki, D. L. Tarnoki, C. M. A. Haworth, R. Plomin, S. Y. Öncel, F. Aliev, E. Medda, L. Nisticò, V. Toccaceli, J. M. Craig, R. Saffery, S. H. Siribaddana, M. Hotopf, A. Sumathipala, F. Rijsdijk, H.-U. Jeong, T. Spector, M. Mangino, G. Lachance, M. Gatz, D. A. Butler, W. Gao, C. Yu, L. Li, G. Bayasgalan, D. Narandalai, K. P. Harden, E. M. Tucker-Drob, K. Christensen, A. Skytthe, K. O. Kyvik, C. A. Derom, R. F. Vlietinck, R. J. F. Loos, W. Cozen, A. E. Hwang, T. M. Mack, M. He, X. Ding, J. L. Silberg, H. H. Maes, T. L. Cutler, J. L. Hopper, P. K. E. Magnusson, N. L. Pedersen, A. K. Dahl Aslan, L. A. Baker, C. Tuvblad, M. Bjerregaard-Andersen, H. Beck-Nielsen, M. Sodemann, V. Ullemar, C. Almqvist, Q. Tan, D. Zhang, G. E. Swan, R. Krasnow, K. L. Jang, A. Knafo-Noam, D. Mankuta, L. Abramson, P. Lichtenstein, R. F. Krueger, M. McGue, S. Pahlen, P. Tynelius, F. Rasmussen, G. E. Duncan, D. Buchwald, R. P. Corley, B. M. Huibregtse, T. L. Nelson, K. E. Whitfield, C. E. Franz, W. S. Kremen, M. J. Lyons, S. Ooki, I. Brandt, T. S. Nilsen, J. R. Harris, J. Sung, H. A. Park, J. Lee, S. J. Lee, G. Willemsen, M. Bartels, C. E. M. van Beijsterveldt, C. H. Llewellyn, A. Fisher, E. Rebato, A. Busjahn, R. Tomizawa, F. Inui, M. Watanabe, C. Honda, N. Sakai, Y.-M. Hur, T. I. A. Sørensen, D. I. Boomsma, J. Kaprio
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- Journal:
- Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 22 / Issue 6 / December 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 31 July 2019, pp. 800-808
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The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze individual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided individual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin individuals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large sample sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.