AUSTRALIAN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN TWIN RESEARCH

Ambient temperature and genome-wide DNA methylation: A twin and family study in Australia

Rongbin Xu, Shuai Li, Shanshan Li, Ee Ming Wong, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper, Michael J Abramson, Yuming Guo

2021-09-15

Little is known about the association between ambient temperature and DNA methylation, which is a potential biological process thr..

Residential surrounding greenness and DNA methylation: An epigenome-wide association study

Rongbin Xu, Shuai Li, Shanshan Li, Ee Ming Wong, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper, Michael J Abramson, Yuming Guo

2021-09-01

BACKGROUND: DNA methylation is a potential biological mechanism through which residential greenness affects health, but little is ..

Surrounding Greenness and Biological Aging Based on DNA Methylation: A Twin and Family Study in Australia

Rongbin Xu, Shuai Li, Shanshan Li, Ee Ming Wong, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper, Michael J Abramson, Yuming Guo

2021-08-01

BACKGROUND: High surrounding greenness has many health benefits and might contribute to slower biological aging. However, very few..

The Association Between Chronic Disease and Psychological Distress: An Australian Twin Study

Jessica Tyler, Janine Lam, Katrina Scurrah, Gillian Dite

2020-12-01

There is a commonly observed association between chronic disease and psychological distress, but many potential factors could conf..

Exploring human trainability: Design and rationale of Studies of Twin Responses to Understand Exercise as a Therapy (STRUETH) study

Channa E Marsh, Hannah J Thomas, Louise H Naylor, Katrina J Scurrah, Daniel J Green

2020-09-01

Background: Exercise confers myriad health benefits and physical inactivity is a modifiable risk factor for many non-communicable ..

Heritability of overlapping impulsivity and compulsivity dimensional phenotypes

Jeggan Tiego, Samuel R Chamberlain, Ben J Harrison, Andrew Dawson, Lucy Albertella, George J Youssef, Leonardo F Fontenelle, Murat Yucel

2020-09-01

Impulsivity and compulsivity are traits relevant to a range of mental health problems and have traditionally been conceptualised a..

Inference about causation from examination of familial confounding (ICE FALCON): a model for assessing causation analogous to Mendelian randomization

Shuai Li, Minh Bui, John L Hopper

2020-08-01

BACKGROUND: We developed a method to make Inference about Causation from Examination of FAmiliaL CONfounding (ICE FALCON) using ob..

Fitness and strength responses to distinct exercise modes in twins:Studies ofTwinResponses toUnderstandExercise as aTHerapy (STRUETH) study

Channa E Marsh, Hannah J Thomas, Louise H Naylor, Katrina J Scurrah, Daniel J Green

2020-07-07

KEY POINTS: Exercise is considered medicine; however, the individual degree of responsiveness to a standardized dose of exercise i..

Individualised MRI training for paediatric neuroimaging: A child-focused approach

Emmanuel Peng Kiat Pua, Sarah Barton, Katrina Williams, Jeffrey M Craig, Marc L Seal

2020-02-01

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in paediatric cohorts is often complicated by reluctance to enter the scanner and head motion-rel..

The Value of Twins for Health and Medical Research: A Third of a Century of Progress

Jeffrey M Craig, Lucas Calais-Ferreira, Mark P Umstad, Dedra Buchwald

2020-02-01

In 1984, Hrubec and Robinette published what was arguably the first review of the role of twins in medical research. The authors a..

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, LH Bogl, DL Freitas, JA Maia, JVB Hjelmborg, S Aaltonen, M Piirtola, A Latvala, L Calais-Ferreira, VC Oliveira, PH Ferreira, F Ji, F Ning, Z Pang

2019-12-01

The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collab..

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

2019-12-01

Twins Research Australia (TRA) is a community of twins and researchers working on health research to benefit everyone, including t..

DNA methylation-based biological age, genome-wide average DNA methylation, and conventional breast cancer risk factors

Minyuan Chen, Ee Ming Wong, Tuong L Nguyen, Gillian S Dite, Jennifer Stone, Pierre-Antoine Dugue, Graham G Giles, Melissa C Southey, Roger L Milne, John L Hopper, Shuai Li

2019-10-21

DNA methylation-based biological age (DNAm age), as well as genome-wide average DNA methylation, have been reported to predict bre..

Genome-wide association study of peripheral blood DNA methylation and conventional mammographic density measures

Shuai Li, Pierre-Antoine Dugue, Laura Baglietto, Gianluca Severi, Ee Ming Wong, Tuong L Nguyen, Jennifer Stone, Dallas R English, Melissa C Southey, Graham G Giles, John L Hopper, Roger L Milne

2019-10-01

Age- and body mass index (BMI)-adjusted mammographic density is one of the strongest breast cancer risk factors. DNA methylation i..

The Association between Socioeconomic Status and Psychological Distress: A Within and Between Twin Study

Janine R Lam, Jessica Tyler, Katrina J Scurrah, Nicola J Reavley, Gillian S Dite

2019-10-01

Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been established as a risk factor for poor mental health; however, the relationship between SES..

Contributions of birthweight, annualised weight gain and BMI to back pain in adults: a population-based co-twin control study of 2754 Australian twins

Hercules R Leite, Amabile B Dario, Alison R Harmer, Vinicius C Oliveira, Manuela L Ferreira, Lucas Calais-Ferreira, Paulo H Ferreira

2019-02-01

PURPOSE: To investigate associations between anthropometric measures (birthweight, weight gain and current BMI) and back pain; and..

Inference about causation between body mass index and DNA methylation in blood from a twin family study

Shuai Li, Ee Ming Wong, Minh Bui, Tuong L Nguyen, Ji-Hoon Eric Joo, Jennifer Stone, Gillian S Dite, Pierre-Antoine Dugue, Roger L Milne, Graham G Giles, Richard Saffery, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper

2019-02-01

BACKGROUND: Several studies have reported DNA methylation in blood to be associated with body mass index (BMI), but few have inves..

Association between birth weight and educational attainment: an individual-based pooled analysis of nine twin cohorts

Aline Jelenkovic, Janne Mikkonen, Pekka Martikainen, Antti Latvala, Yoshie Yokoyama, Reijo Sund, Eero Vuoksimaa, Esther Rebato, Joohon Sung, Jina Kim, Jooyeon Lee, Sooji Lee, Maria A Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Sonia Brescianini, Catherine A Derom, Robert F Vlietinck, Ruth JF Loos, Robert F Krueger, Matt Mcgue

2018-09-01

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that birth weight is positively associated with education, but it remains unclear whether this assoc..

An open-source, integrated pedigree data management and visualization tool for genetic epidemiology

Thilina Ranaweera, Enes Makalic, John L Hopper, Adrian Bickerstaffe

2018-08-01

With advances in genetic epidemiology, increasingly large amounts of pedigree-related information are being collected by family st..

Association of current and former smoking with body mass index: A study of smoking discordant twin pairs from 21 twin cohorts

Maarit Piirtola, Aline Jelenkovic, Antti Latvala, Reijo Sund, Chika Honda, Fujio Inui, Mikio Watanabe, Rie Tomizawa, Yoshinori Iwatani, Juan R Ordonana, Juan F Sanchez-Romera, Lucia Colodro-Conde, Adam D Tarnoki, David L Tarnoki, Nicholas G Martin, Grant W Montgomery, Sarah E Medland, Finn Rasmussen, Per Tynelius, Qihua Tan

2018-07-12

BACKGROUND: Smokers tend to weigh less than never smokers, while successful quitting leads to an increase in body weight. Because ..

Genome-wide average DNA methylation is determined in utero

Shuai Li, Ee Ming Wong, Pierre-Antoine Dugue, Allan F McRae, Eunae Kim, Ji-Hoon Eric Joo, Tuong L Nguyen, Jennifer Stone, Gillian S Dite, Nicola J Armstrong, Karen A Mather, Anbupalam Thalamuthu, Margaret J Wright, David Ames, Roger L Milne, Jeffrey M Craig, Richard Saffery, Grant W Montgomery, Yun-Mi Song, Joohon Sung

2018-06-01

BACKGROUND: Investigating the genetic and environmental causes of variation in genome-wide average DNA methylation (GWAM), a globa..

Associations between birth size and later height from infancy through adulthood: An individual based pooled analysis of 28 twin cohorts participating in the CODATwins project

Aline Jelenkovic, Yoshie Yokoyama, Reijo Sund, Yoon-Mi Hur, Jennifer R Harris, Ingunn Brandt, Thomas Sevenius Nilsen, Syuichi Ooki, Vilhelmina Ullemar, Catarina Almqvist, Patrik KE Magnusson, Kimberly J Saudino, Maria A Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Sonia Brescianini, Tracy L Nelson, Keith E Whitfield, Ariel Knafo-Noam, David Mankuta, Lior Abramson

2018-05-01

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that birth size is positively associated with height in later life, but it remains unclear whether t..

Twin studies for the prognosis, prevention and treatment of musculoskeletal conditions

Lucas Calais-Ferreira, Vinicius C Oliveira, Jeffrey M Craig, Louisa B Flander, John L Hopper, Luci F Teixeira-Salmela, Paulo H Ferreira

2018-05-01

BACKGROUND: Musculoskeletal conditions are highly prevalent in our ageing society and are therefore incurring substantial increase..

Birth size and gestational age in opposite-sex twins as compared to same-sex twins: An individual-based pooled analysis of 21 cohorts

Aline Jelenkovic, Reijo Sund, Yoshie Yokoyama, Yoon-Mi Hur, Vilhelmina Ullemar, Catarina Almqvist, Patrik KE Magnusson, Gonneke Willemsen, Meike Bartels, Catharina EM van Beijsterveldt, Leonie H Bogl, Kirsi H Pietilainen, Eero Vuoksimaa, Fuling Ji, Feng Ning, Zengchang Pang, Tracy L Nelson, Keith E Whitfield, Esther Rebato, Clare H Llewellyn

2018-04-19

It is well established that boys are born heavier and longer than girls, but it remains unclear whether birth size in twins is aff..

Novel associations between blood DNA methylation and body mass index in middle-aged and older adults

YM Geurts, P-A Dugue, JE Joo, E Makalic, C-H Jung, W Guan, S Nguyen, ML Grove, EM Wong, AM Hodge, JK Bassett, LM FitzGerald, H Tsimiklis, L Baglietto, G Severi, DF Schmidt, DD Buchanan, RJ MacInnis, JL Hopper, JS Pankow

2018-04-01

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: There is increasing evidence of a relationship between blood DNA methylation and body mass index (BMI). We ..

Causal effect of smoking on DNA methylation in peripheral blood: a twin and family study

Shuai Li, Ee Ming Wong, Minh Bui, Tuong L Nguyen, Ji-Hoon Eric Joo, Jennifer Stone, Gillian S Dite, Graham G Giles, Richard Saffery, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper

2018-02-09

Background: Smoking has been reported to be associated with peripheral blood DNA methylation, but the causal aspects of the associ..

Twins as Participants in Randomized Controlled Trials: A Review of Published Literature

Athula Sumathipala, Lisa Yelland, Debra Green, Tom Shepherd, Kaushalya Jayaweera, Paulo Ferreira, Jeffrey M Craig

2018-02-01

Monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins participate in research that partitions variance in health, disease, and behavior into g..

Association between birthweight and later body mass index: an individual-based pooled analysis of 27 twin cohorts participating in the CODATwins project

Aline Jelenkovic, Yoshie Yokoyama, Reijo Sund, Kirsi H Pietilainen, Yoon-Mi Hur, Gonneke Willemsen, Meike Bartels, Toos CEM van Beijsterveldt, Syuichi Ooki, Kimberly J Saudino, Maria A Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Cristina D'Ippolito, Tracy L Nelson, Keith E Whitfield, Ariel Knafo-Noam, David Mankuta, Lior Abramson, Kauko Heikkila, Tessa L Cutler

2017-10-01

Background: There is evidence that birthweight is positively associated with body mass index (BMI) in later life, but it remains u..

Education in Twins and Their Parents Across Birth Cohorts Over 100 years: An Individual-Level Pooled Analysis of 42-Twin Cohorts

Karri Silventoinen, Aline Jelenkovic, Antti Latvala, Reijo Sund, Yoshie Yokoyama, Vilhelmina Ullemar, Catarina Almqvist, Catherine A Derom, Robert F Vlietinck, Ruth JF Loos, Christian Kandler, Chika Honda, Fujio Inui, Yoshinori Iwatani, Mikio Watanabe, Esther Rebato, Maria A Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Sonia Brescianini, Yoon-Mi Hur

2017-10-01

Whether monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins differ from each other in a variety of phenotypes is important for genetic twin ..

Twin birth changes DNA methylation of subsequent siblings

Shuai Li, Eunae Kim, Ee Ming Wong, Ji-Hoon Eric Joo, Tuong L Nguyen, Jennifer Stone, Yun-Mi Song, Louisa B Flander, Richard Saffery, Graham G Giles, Melissa C Southey, Joohon Sung, John L Hopper

2017-08-16

We asked if twin birth influences the DNA methylation of subsequent siblings. We measured whole blood methylation using the HumanM..

Does the sex of one's co-twin affect height and BMI in adulthood? A study of dizygotic adult twins from 31 cohorts

Leonie H Bogl, Aline Jelenkovic, Eero Vuoksimaa, Linda Ahrenfeldt, Kirsi H Pietilainen, Maria A Stazi, Corrado Fagnani, Cristina D'Ippolito, Yoon-Mi Hur, Hoe-Uk Jeong, Judy L Silberg, Lindon J Eaves, Hermine H Maes, Gombojav Bayasgalan, Danshiitsoodol Narandalai, Tessa L Cutler, Christian Kandler, Kerry L Jang, Kaare Christensen, Axel Skytthe

2017-04-27

BACKGROUND: The comparison of traits in twins from opposite-sex (OS) and same-sex (SS) dizygotic twin pairs is considered a proxy ..

Causes of blood methylomic variation for middle-aged women measured by the HumanMethylation450 array

Shuai Li, Ee Ming Wong, Tuong L Nguyen, Ji-Hoon Eric Joo, Jennifer Stone, Gillian S Dite, Graham G Giles, Richard Saffery, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper

2017-01-01

To address the limitations in current classic twin/family research on the genetic and/or environmental causes of human methylomic ..

Genetic and environmental influences on adult human height across birth cohorts from 1886 to 1994

Aline Jelenkovic, Yoon-Mi Hur, Reijo Sund, Yoshie Yokoyama, Sisira H Siribaddana, Matthew Hotopf, Athula Sumathipala, Fruhling Rijsdijk, Qihua Tan, Dongfeng Zhang, Zengchang Pang, Sari Aaltonen, Kauko Heikkila, Sevgi Y Oncel, Fazil Aliev, Esther Rebato, Adam D Tarnoki, David L Tarnoki, Kaare Christensen, Axel Skytthe

2016-12-14

Human height variation is determined by genetic and environmental factors, but it remains unclear whether their influences differ ..

Distinct Genetic Influences on Cortical and Subcortical Brain Structures

Wei Wen, Anbupalam Thalamuthu, Karen A Mather, Wanlin Zhu, Jiyang Jiang, Pierre Lafaye de Micheaux, Margaret J Wright, David Ames, Perminder S Sachdev

2016-09-06

This study examined the heritability of brain grey matter structures in a subsample of older adult twins (93 MZ and 68 DZ twin pai..

The Charles Perkins Centre's Twins Research Node

Lucas C Ferreira, Jeffrey M Craig, John L Hopper, Susan E Carrick

2016-08-01

Twins can help researchers disentangle the roles of genes from those of the environment on human traits, health, and diseases. To ..

Early origins of mental disorder - risk factors in the perinatal and infant period

Louise Newman, Fiona Judd, Craig A Olsson, David Castle, Chad Bousman, Penelope Sheehan, Christos Pantelis, Jeffrey M Craig, Angela Komiti, Ian Everall

2016-07-29

BACKGROUND: There is increasing understanding of the significance of early neurodevelopment in establishing risk for the range of ..

White Matter Hyperintensities Are Under Strong Genetic Influence

Perminder S Sachdev, Anbupalam Thalamuthu, Karen A Mather, David Ames, Margaret J Wright, Wei Wen

2016-06-01

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The genetic basis of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) is still unknown. This study examines the heritab..

Twin's Birth-Order Differences in Height and Body Mass Index From Birth to Old Age: A Pooled Study of 26 Twin Cohorts Participating in the CODATwins Project

Yoshie Yokoyama, Aline Jelenkovic, Reijo Sund, Joohon Sung, John L Hopper, Syuichi Ooki, Kauko Heikkila, Sari Aaltonen, Adam D Tarnoki, David L Tarnoki, Gonneke Willemsen, Meike Bartels, Toos CEM van Beijsterveldt, Kimberly J Saudino, Tessa L Cutler, Tracy L Nelson, Keith E Whitfield, Jane Wardle, Clare H Llewellyn, Abigail Fisher

2016-04-01

We analyzed birth order differences in means and variances of height and body mass index (BMI) in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (..

Genetic and Environmental Causes of Variation in the Difference Between Biological Age Based on DNA Methylation and Chronological Age for Middle-Aged Women

Shuai Li, Ee Ming Wong, JiHoon E Joo, Chol-Hee Jung, Jessica Chung, Carmel Apicella, Jennifer Stone, Gillian S Dite, Graham G Giles, Melissa C Southey, John L Hopper

2015-12-01

The disease- and mortality-related difference between biological age based on DNA methylation and chronological age (Δage) has bee..

Why Accurate Knowledge of Zygosity is Important to Twins

Tessa L Cutler, Kate Murphy, John L Hopper, Louise A Keogh, Yun Dai, Jeffrey M Craig

2015-06-01

All same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins and approximately one-third of monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs have separate placentas, making it im..