Our projects
At present, about 30 ongoing projects based on the twin registry cover a broad spectrum in public health. Some areas being investigated are aging, dementia, allergy, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
Other projects are about effects of gender differences on health and life-situations.
Ongoing projects
About 70,000 twins in Sweden born before 1985 have recently responded to questionnaires or interviews. The twins answered questions about diseases they have/hade and drugs they use. Now we are analyzing the information.
To estimate how genes or environment influence different diseases and behavior in childhood, we contact parents to all Swedish twins turning 9 or 12 years More than 6 000 twins' parents have been contacted so far. We continue to interview new parents to the 9 year olds.
Another exiting project is Dementia in Swedish Twins (HARMONY). It concerns aging and memory. The aim of this study is to investigate which factors affect our memory capacity and incidence of dementia.
Parents and children in about 1,500 twin pairs have over 12 years responded to different questionnaires concerning the health and behavior of the children. The study is designed to address the interplay between genes and environments, comorbidity, and the development into adult psychopathology.
We have collected data on family relationships, including parent-child, marital and siblings, on adult and child mental health, and on the individual attributes of family members. Twin parents, their partner and the target child have participate through questionnaires and an interview, using a multi-agent, multi-method strategy.
We collaborate with molecular geneticists who are working on identifying genes that cause different diseases. This mainly refers to cardiovascular and affective disorders.
In a study on Parkinsons disease we assess the importance of environmental factors for the disease in a population-based sample of Swedish twins. There are about 400 twin pairs in this study.
