Abstract
The Registry consists of nearly 10,000 monozygous and dizygous adult caucasian twins aged 18-80 from all over the UK and was started in 1993. This is a volunteer sample recruited by successive media campaigns without selecting for particular diseases or traits. All twins receive a series of disease questionnaires. In addition over half the twins have been assessed in detail clinically for several hundred phenotypes related to common diseases or intermediate traits. The focus has been primarily on cardiovascular, metabolic, musculoskeletal, dermatological, and opthalmological diseases. Over 3000 DZ twins have had a genome wide scan performed as well as many candidate genes allowing both linkage and association studies. The registry has led to many successful innovative research projects, particularly in common diseases previously thought to be predominantly environmental and helped positionally clone some novel genes for common diseases.
MeSH terms
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Adult
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Cardiovascular Diseases / epidemiology
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Cardiovascular Diseases / genetics
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Chromosome Mapping
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Databases, Factual* / statistics & numerical data
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Databases, Factual* / trends
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Diseases in Twins / epidemiology*
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Diseases in Twins / genetics*
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Environment
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Eye Diseases / epidemiology
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Eye Diseases / genetics
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Female
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Forecasting
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Hematologic Diseases / epidemiology
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Hematologic Diseases / genetics
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Humans
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Immune System Diseases / epidemiology
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Immune System Diseases / genetics
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Male
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Microvascular Angina / epidemiology
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Microvascular Angina / genetics
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Molecular Epidemiology
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Osteoarthritis / epidemiology
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Osteoarthritis / genetics
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Osteoporosis / epidemiology
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Osteoporosis / genetics
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Population Surveillance / methods*
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Registries* / statistics & numerical data
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Research Design
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Risk Factors
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Skin Diseases / epidemiology
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Skin Diseases / genetics
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Twin Studies as Topic / methods*
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Twin Studies as Topic / statistics & numerical data
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Twin Studies as Topic / trends
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United Kingdom / epidemiology