FY20

Sinclair VG, Adams SM, Dietrich M. The pervasive, damaging nature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents enormous clinical challenges. Understanding the relationship between patients’ perceptions of PTSD symptoms and resilient coping strategies may prompt investigation of clinical interventions that improve adaptive, resilient coping skills. In this study, we examined whether changes in resilient coping were […]

Floyd K, York C, Ray CD. Using a twin study design, we explored the extent to which affectionate communication is a heritable behavioral trait. Participants (N = 928) were 464 adult twin pairs (229 monozygotic, 235 dizygotic) who provided data on their affectionate communication behaviors. Through ACE modeling, we determined that approximately 45% of the variance in trait expressed […]

Rhew IC, Fleming CB, Tsang S, Horn E, Kosterman R, Duncan GE. Background There has been increased interest in the interplay of genetic and environmental factors in the development of problematic alcohol use, including socioeconomic conditions of the neighborhood. Using a co-twin design, we examined the extent to which contributions of genetic, shared environmental, and […]

Dhondalay GKR, Bunning B, Bauer RN, Barnathan ES, Maniscalco C, Baribaud F, Nadeau KC, Andorf S. Asthma is the most prevalent chronic lung inflammatory disorder characterized by reversible airflow obstruction, affecting 358 million people worldwide, with aggravating factors like obesity, attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, socioeconomic status like poor healthcare affordability and facility, smoking and alcohol intake. RNA sequencing […]

Cox RC, Taylor S, Strachan E, Olatunji BO. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and insomnia are comorbid clinical conditions that are thought to result from genetic and environmental effects. Though studies have established the heritability of these disorders independently, no study to date has examined the genetic contributions to the relation between insomnia and PTSD symptoms […]

Kowynia E, Jahanfar S. Background and objectives The purpose of this project is to evaluate the association between twin sex discordance and menstrual characteristics. We hypothesize that sharing the uterus with a male twin can change ovulation programming, hence changing the menstrual cycle characteristics during adulthood. This project could be novel in discovering new physiological […]

Bunning BJ, Contrepois K, Lee-McMullen B, Dhondalay GKR, Zhang W, Tupa D, Raeber O, Desai M, Nadeau KC, Snyder MP, Andorf S. Aging is intimately linked to system-wide metabolic changes that can be captured in blood. Understanding biological processes of aging in humans could help maintain a healthy aging trajectory and promote longevity. We performed […]

Zhu Y, Strachan E, Fowler E, Bacus T, Roy-Byrne P, Zhao J. DNA methylation plays an important role in major depressive disorder (MDD), but the specific genes and genomic regions associated with MDD remain largely unknown. Here we conducted genome-wide profiling of DNA methylation (Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip) and gene expression (RNA-seq) in peripheral blood monocytes […]

Duncan GE, Avery A, Hurvitz PM, Moudon AV, Tsang S, Turkheimer E. The role of built and social environments in supporting healthy lifestyles has received increased attention over the past decade, as research and prevention paradigms have shifted from a focus on individual-level behaviour change to macro-level influences embedded within social-ecological models of health that […]

McCall CA, Turkheimer E, Tsang S, Avery A, Duncan GE, Watson NF. Study Objectives Long and short sleep duration are associated with greater risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); however, it is unknown how genetic and environmental influences impact this relationship. Thus, we investigated the association between sleep duration and PTSD symptoms using twin […]

Silventoinen K, Jelenkovic A, Yokoyama Y, Sund R, Sugawara M, Tanaka M, Matsumoto S, Bogl LH, Freitas DL, Maia JA, Hjelmborg JVB, Aaltonen S, Piirtola M, Latvala A, Calais-Ferreira L, Oliveira VC, Ferreira PH, Ji F, Ning F, Pang Z, Ordoñana JR, Sánchez-Romera JF, Colodro-Conde L, Burt SA, Klump KL, Martin NG, Medland SE, Montgomery […]

Duncan GE, Avery AR, Strachan E, Turkheimer E, Tsang S. It has been over 5 years since the last special issue of Twin Research and Human Genetics on ‘Twin Registries Worldwide: An Important Resource for Scientific Research’ was published. Much progress has been made in the broad field of twin research since that time, and the current […]