Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
15836807
TITLE
Genetic and environmental influences on the frequency of orgasm in women.
ABSTRACT
This study reports on genetic and environmental influences on the frequency of orgasm in women during sexual intercourse, during other sexual contact with a partner, and during masturbation. Participants were drawn from the Australian Twin Registry, and recruited from a large, partly longitudinal twin-family study. Three thousand and eighty women responded to the anonymous self-report questionnaire, including 667 complete monozygotic (MZ) pairs and 377 complete dizygotic (DZ) same-sex pairs, 366 women from complete DZ opposite-sex pairs, and 626 women whose co-twins did not participate. Significant twin correlations were found for both MZ and DZ twin pairs for all three items of interest. Age effects were statistically significant for some items. Models incorporating additive genetic, shared and nonshared environmental influences provided the best fit for Items 1 and 3, while a model with additive and nonadditive genetic influences along with nonshared environment fitted the data from Item 2. While an independent pathway model fits the data most par-simoniously, a common pathway model incorporating additive genetic (A), shared environment (C), and unique environment (E) effects cannot be ruled out. Overall, genetic influences account for approximately 31% of the variance of frequency of orgasm during sexual intercourse, 37% of the variance of frequency of orgasm during sexual contact other than during intercourse, and 51% of the variance of frequency of orgasm during masturbation. Following Baker (1996), we speculate that this additive genetic variance might arise from frequency-dependent selection for a variety of female sexual strategies.
DATE PUBLISHED
2005 Feb
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
pubmed 2005/04/20 09:00
medline 2005/12/24 09:00
entrez 2005/04/20 09:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Dawood K Dawood Khytam K Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA. khytam@uchicago.edu
Kirk KM Kirk Katherine M KM
Bailey JM Bailey J Michael JM
Andrews PW Andrews Paul W PW
Martin NG Martin Nicholas G NG
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 8
ISSUE: 1
TITLE: Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies
ISOABBREVIATION: Twin Res Hum Genet
YEAR: 2005
MONTH: Feb
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 1832-4274
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Twin Res Hum Genet
COUNTRY: England
ISSNLINKING: 1832-4274
NLMUNIQUEID: 101244624
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
REFTYPE REFSOURCE REFPMID NOTE
CommentIn Twin Res Hum Genet. 2006 Aug;9(4):603-8 16899171
GRANTS
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Environment
Female
Genetics, Behavioral
Humans
Multivariate Analysis
Orgasm
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's