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
26410687
TITLE
Chorionicity and Heritability Estimates from Twin Studies: The Prenatal Environment of Twins and Their Resemblance Across a Large Number of Traits.
ABSTRACT
There are three types of monozygotic (MZ) twins. MZ twins can either share one chorion and one amnion, each twin can have its own amnion, or MZ twins can-like dizygotic twins-each have their own chorion and amnion. Sharing the same chorion may create a more similar/dissimilar prenatal environment and bias heritability estimates, but most twin studies do not distinguish between these three types of MZ twin pairs. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of chorion sharing on the similarity within MZ twin pairs for a large number of traits. Information on chorion status was obtained for the Netherlands twin register (NTR) by linkage to the records from the database of the dutch pathological anatomy national automated archive (PALGA). Record linkage was successful for over 9000 pairs. Effect of chorion type was tested by comparing the within-pair similarity between monochorionic (MC) and dichorionic (DC) MZ twins on 66 traits including weight, height, motor milestones, child problem behaviors, cognitive function, wellbeing and personality. For only 10 traits, within-pair similarity differed between MCMZ and DCMZ pairs. For traits influenced by birth weight (e.g. weight and height in young children) we expected that MC twins would be more discordant. This was found for 5 out of 13 measures. When looking at traits where blood supply is important, we saw MCMZ twins to be more concordant than DCMZ's for 3 traits. We conclude that the influence on the MZ twin correlation of the intra-uterine prenatal environment, as measured by sharing a chorion type, is small and limited to a few phenotypes. This implies that the assumption of equal prenatal environment of mono- and DC MZ twins, which characterizes the classical twin design, is largely tenable.
DATE PUBLISHED
2016 05
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
received 2015/03/17
accepted 2015/09/04
entrez 2015/09/28 06:00
pubmed 2015/09/28 06:00
medline 2017/05/10 06:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
van Beijsterveldt CE van Beijsterveldt C E M CE Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands. t.van.beijsterveldt@vu.nl.
Overbeek LI Overbeek L I H LI PALGA Foundation, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Rozendaal L Rozendaal L L Department of Pathology, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
McMaster MT McMaster M T B MT Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Glasner TJ Glasner T J TJ Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Bartels M Bartels M M Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Vink JM Vink J M JM Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Martin NG Martin N G NG Genetic Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Dolan CV Dolan C V CV Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Boomsma DI Boomsma D I DI Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 46
ISSUE: 3
TITLE: Behavior genetics
ISOABBREVIATION: Behav. Genet.
YEAR: 2016
MONTH: 05
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Internet
ISSN: 1573-3297
ISSNTYPE: Electronic
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Behav Genet
COUNTRY: United States
ISSNLINKING: 0001-8244
NLMUNIQUEID: 0251711
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
KEYWORD
Chorion
Equal environment
Heritability estimate
Prenatal
Record linkage
Twins
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Chorion physiology
Female physiology
Humans physiology
Inheritance Patterns genetics
Male genetics
Pregnancy genetics
Twin Studies as Topic genetics
Twins genetics
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's