POPH20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: United States Senate Committee On Health, Education, Labor And Pensions, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Twin Study

• School: University of Melbourne
• Department: Population Health
• Course: POPH20001
• Professor: Alison Trainer

Document Summary

Twin studies can reveal information not possible from studies of unrelated people alone. Twin studies do not prove a genetic hypothesis, nor imply genetic determinism, but they can indicate traits and disease where genetics likely plays a role. By controlling for genes, twins studies - including clinical trials - can give compelling insights into the roles of the environment. There are two major types of twin pairs. Monozygous pairs have the same genetic makeup, and are of the same sex. Dizygous pairs share, on average, half their genes, and can be of the same or different sex. Twins are of the same age +/- a few minutes. About 1 in 80 births are twin pairs. Twins tend to be, on average, of lower birth weight and more likely to be premature, then singletons. On average, twins are delayed in developing language, reading and writing skills cf. singletons.