The Netherlands Twin Register: Longitudinal Research Based on Twin and Twin-Family Designs

Abstract The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) is a national register in which twins, multiples and their parents, siblings, spouses and other family members participate. Here we describe the NTR resources that were created from more than 30 years of data collections; the development and maintenance of the newly developed database systems, and the possibilities these resources create for future research. Since the early 1980s, the NTR has enrolled around 120,000 twins and a roughly equal number of their relatives. The majority of twin families have participated in survey studies, and subsamples... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Ligthart, Lannie
van Beijsterveldt, Catharina E.M.
Kevenaar, Sofieke T.
de Zeeuw, Eveline
van Bergen, Elsje
Bruins, Susanne
Pool, René
Helmer, Quinta
van Dongen, Jenny
Hottenga, Jouke-Jan
van’t Ent, Dennis
Dolan, Conor V.
Davies, Gareth E.
Ehli, Erik A.
Bartels, Meike
Willemsen, Gonneke
de Geus, Eco J.C.
Boomsma, Dorret I.
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
Reihe/Periodikum: Twin Research and Human Genetics ; volume 22, issue 6, page 623-636 ; ISSN 1832-4274 1839-2628
Verlag/Hrsg.: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27238136
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/thg.2019.93

Abstract The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) is a national register in which twins, multiples and their parents, siblings, spouses and other family members participate. Here we describe the NTR resources that were created from more than 30 years of data collections; the development and maintenance of the newly developed database systems, and the possibilities these resources create for future research. Since the early 1980s, the NTR has enrolled around 120,000 twins and a roughly equal number of their relatives. The majority of twin families have participated in survey studies, and subsamples took part in biomaterial collection (e.g., DNA) and dedicated projects, for example, for neuropsychological, biomarker and behavioral traits. The recruitment into the NTR is all inclusive without any restrictions on enrollment. These resources — the longitudinal phenotyping, the extended pedigree structures and the multigeneration genotyping — allow for future twin-family research that will contribute to gene discovery, causality modeling, and studies of genetic and cultural inheritance.