Gene–environment interaction is likely to be a common and important source of variation for complex behavioral traits. Often conceptualized as the genetic control of sensitivity to the environment, it can be incorporated in variance components twin analyses by partitioning genetic effects into a mean part, which is independent of the environment, and a part that is a linear function of the environment. The model allows for one or more environmental moderator variables (that possibly interact with each other) that may i) be continuous or binary ii) differ between twins within a pair iii) interact with residual environmental as well as genetic effects iv) have nonlinear moderating properties v) show scalar (different magnitudes) or qualitative (different genes) interactions vi) be correlated with genetic effects acting upon the trait, to allow for a test of gene–environment interaction in the presence of gene–envi-ronment correlation. Aspects and applications of a class of models are explored by simulation, in the context of both individual differences twin analysis and, in a companion paper (Purcell & Sham, 2002) sibpair quantitative trait locus linkage analysis. As well as elucidating environmental pathways, consideration of gene–environment interaction in quantitative and molecular studies will potentially direct and enhance gene-mapping efforts.

Amajor component of variation in body height is due to genetic differences, but environmental factors have a substantial contributory effect. In this study we aimed to analyse whether the genetic architecture of body height varies between affluent western societies. We analysed twin data from eight countries comprising 30,111 complete twin pairs by using the univariate genetic model of the Mx statistical package. Body height and zygosity were self-reported in seven populations and measured directly in one population. We found that there was substantial variation in mean body height between countries; body height was least in Italy (177 cm in men and 163 cm in women) and greatest in the Netherlands (184 cm and 171 cm, respectively). In men there was no corresponding variation in heritability of body height, heritability estimates ranging from 0.87 to 0.93 in populations under an additive genes/unique environment (AE) model. Among women the heritability estimates were generally lower than among men with greater variation between countries, ranging from 0.68 to 0.84 when an additive genes/shared environment/unique environment (ACE) model was used. In four populations where an AE model fit equally well or better, heritability ranged from 0.89 to 0.93. This difference between the sexes was mainly due to the effect of the shared environmental component of variance, which appears to be more important among women than among men in our study populations. Our results indicate that, in general, there are only minor differences in the genetic architecture of height between affluent Caucasian populations, especially among men.

The relative proportions of genetic and environmental variance in behavioral measures have been studied extensively. A growing body of literature has examined changes in heritability measures over time, but we are unaware of any prior efforts to assess developmental heritability changes for multiple behavioral phenotypes using multiple data sources. We have chosen to explore the proportional genetic influences on a variety of behaviors during the genetically and environmentally labile adolescent and young adult years. This meta-analysis examined 8 behavioral domains and incorporated only primary research articles reporting two or more heritability time points in order to minimize the age-to-age error variability. Linear regression analyses revealed significant cross-time heritability increases for externalizing behaviors, anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, IQ, and social attitudes and nonsignificant increases for alcohol consumption, and nicotine initiation, but no evidence of heritability changes for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. A variety of mechanisms may underlie these findings including the rising importance of active genotype-environment correlation, an increase in gene expression, or proportional reductions in environmental variance. Additional longitudinal studies and the inclusion of measures of total variance in primary research reports will aid in distinguishing between these possibilities. Further studies exploring heritability changes beyond young adulthood would also benefit our understanding of factors influencing heritability of behavioral traits over the lifespan.

In the late 1980s The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) was established by recruiting young twins and multiples at birth and by approaching adolescent and young adult twins through city councils. The Adult NTR (ANTR) includes twins, their parents, siblings, spouses and their adult offspring. The number of participants in the ANTR who take part in survey and / or laboratory studies is over 22,000 subjects. A special group of participants consists of sisters who are mothers of twins. In the Young NTR (YNTR), data on more than 50,000 young twins have been collected. Currently we are extending the YNTR by including siblings of twins. Participants in YNTR and ANTR have been phenotyped every 2 to 3 years in longitudinal survey studies, since 1986 and 1991 for the YNTR and ANTR, respectively. The resulting large population-based datasets are used for genetic epidemiological studies and also, for example, to advance phenotyping through the development of new syndrome scales based on existing items from other inventories. New research developments further include brain imaging studies in selected and unselected groups, clinical assessment of psychopathology through interviews, and cross-referencing the NTR database to other national databases. A large biobank enterprise is ongoing in the ANTR in which blood and urine samples are collected for genotyping, expression analysis, and meta-bolomics studies. In this paper we give an update on the YNTR and ANTR phenotyping and on the ongoing ANTR biobank studies.

The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) focuses on the early development of the three most common psychological problems in childhood: communication disorders, mild mental impairment and behavior problems. The TEDS twins were assessed longitudinally at 2, 3, 4 and 7 years of age in order to investigate genetic and environmental contributions to change and continuity in language and cognitive development; it is multivariate in order to examine the origins of comorbidity; and it uses a large sample in order to study abnormal development in the context of normal development. The twins were identified from birth records of twins born in the UK in 1994–96. More than 15,000 pairs of twins have been enrolled in TEDS and the participating families are representative of the UK. The measures at 2, 3 and 4 years are administered by parents. At 7 years, children are assessed for language and cognitive development using telephone testing, parents and children are interviewed about behavior problems, and teachers also assess behavior problems as well as academic achievement. One set of findings is that the same genes largely contribute to both language and cognitive problems and the same genes affect normal and abnormal development, a result that suggests that general impairment may be a better target for genetic research than specific language impairment independent of nonverbal cognitive problems. DNA has been obtained so far for more than 4000 pairs and is being used initially in molecular genetic studies of language problems and hyperactivity.

Recent findings of an association between anesthesia administration in the first three years of life and later learning disabilities have created concerns that anesthesia has neurotoxic effects on synaptogenesis, causing later learning problems. An alternative hypothesis is that those children who are likely to undergo surgery early in life have significant medical problems that are associated with a vulnerability to learning disabilities. These two hypotheses were evaluated in a monozygotic concordant–discordant twin design. Data on anesthesia administration and learning abilities and disabilities were available for 1,143 monozygotic twin pairs (56% female) from the Netherlands Twin Registry. Parents of the twins reported on anesthesia use before age 3 and again between ages 3 and 12 years. Near age 12, educational achievement and cognitive problems were assessed with standardized tests and teacher ratings. Results showed that twins who were exposed to anesthesia before age 3 had significantly lower educational achievement scores and significantly more cognitive problems than twins not exposed to anesthesia. However, there was one important exception: the unexposed co-twin from discordant pairs did not differ from their exposed co-twin. Thus, there is no evidence for a causal relationship between anesthesia administration and later learning-related outcomes in this sample. Rather, there is evidence for early anesthesia being a marker of an individual's vulnerability for later learning problems, regardless of their exposure to anesthesia.

With the rapid advances in molecular biology, the near completion of the human genome, the development of appropriate statistical genetic methods and the availability of the necessary computing power, the identification of quantitative trait loci has now become a realistic prospect for quantitative geneticists. We briefly describe the theoretical biometrical foundations underlying quantitative genetics. These theoretical underpinnings are translated into mathematical equations that allow the assessment of the contribution of observed (using DNA samples) and unobserved (using known genetic relationships) genetic variation to population variance in quantitative traits. Several statistical models for quantitative genetic analyses are described, such as models for the classical twin design, multivariate and longitudinal genetic analyses, extended twin analyses, and linkage and association analyses. For each, we show how the theoretical biometrical model can be translated into algebraic equations that may be used to generate scripts for statistical genetic software packages, such as Mx, Lisrel, SOLAR, or MERLIN. For using the former program a web-library (available from http://www.psy.vu.nl/mxbib) has been developed of freely available scripts that can be used to conduct all genetic analyses described in this paper.

Genetic factors have historically been thought of as important in the development of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). For the estimation of the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors, twin studies are an obvious approach. Twin studies of OCD have a long history, starting in 1929. In this review, over 70 years of twin research of OCD is presented, using four different approaches that represent the steps in the twin research of OCD from past to present. These steps include (1) case-studies of twins with OCD from the old literature; (2) twin studies of OCD using Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria; (3) twin studies of OCD using a dimensional approach, comparing resemblances in monozygotic and dizygotic twins; and (4) twin studies of OCD using a dimensional approach, analyzing the data with Structural Equation Modeling. It is concluded that only the studies using the last method have convincingly shown that, in children, obsessive–compulsive (OC) symptoms are heritable, with genetic influences in the range of 45% to 65%. In adults, studies are suggestive for a genetic influence on OC symptoms, ranging from 27% to 47%, but a large twin study using a bio- metrical approach with continuous data is still needed to provide conclusive evidence. Strategies for future twin studies of OCD are discussed.

The Swedish Twin Registry was first established in the late 1950s. Today it includes more than 170,000 twins — in principle all twins born in Sweden since 1886. In this article we describe some ongoing and recently completed projects based on the registry. In particular, we describe recent efforts to screen all twins born between 1959 and 1985, and young twin pairs when they turn 9 and 12 years of age. For these studies, we present initial frequencies of common conditions and exposures.

Migraine is a common neurovascular brain disorder that is manifested in recurrent episodes of disabling headache. The aim of the present study was to compare the prevalence and heritability of migraine across six of the countries that participate in GenomEUtwin project including a total number of 29,717 twin pairs. Migraine was assessed by questionnaires that differed between most countries. It was most prevalent in Danish and Dutch females (32% and 34%, respectively), whereas the lowest prevalence was found in the younger and older Finnish cohorts (13% and 10%, respectively). The estimated genetic variance (heritability) was significant and the same between sexes in all countries. Heritability ranged from 34% to 57%, with lowest estimates in Australia, and highest estimates in the older cohort of Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. There was some indication that part of the genetic variance was non-additive, but this was significant in Sweden only. In addition to genetic factors, environmental effects that are non-shared between members of a twin pair contributed to the liability of migraine. After migraine definitions are homogenized among the participating countries, the GenomEUtwin project will provide a powerful resource to identify the genes involved in migraine.

The classic twin study is sometimes described as “the perfect natural experiment” for the investigation of the aetiology of complex disease, but assumptions of the twin design need to be empirically tested if their results are to be considered unbiased and representative of singleton populations. In this study comparisons of disease and prevalence of lifestyle characteristics have been made between twin participants in the St Thomas' Hospital UK adult twin registry, the largest twin volunteer register in the UK for the study of diseases of ageing, and a parallel population-based study of singleton women. The only differences found were for weight, where monozygotic (MZ) twins were lighter and had a smaller variance than dizygotic (DZ) twins and singletons. For the other variables studied, volunteer twins were not found to differ from age-matched singleton women in distribution or prevalence of: bone mineral density, osteoarthritis, blood pressure, hypertensive drug use, height, history of hysterectomy and ovariectomy, menopausal status and current alcohol and overall tobacco consumption. We conclude that the results of twin studies can be generalised to singleton populations for these measures and disease outcomes.

The Swedish Twin Registry (STR) today contains more than 194,000 twins and more than 75,000 pairs have zygosity determined by an intra-pair similarity algorithm, DNA, or by being of opposite sex. Of these, approximately 20,000, 25,000, and 30,000 pairs are monozygotic, same-sex dizygotic, and opposite-sex dizygotic pairs, respectively. Since its establishment in the late 1950s, the STR has been an important epidemiological resource for the study of genetic and environmental influences on a multitude of traits, behaviors, and diseases. Following large investments in the collection of biological specimens in the past 10 years we have now established a Swedish twin biobank with DNA from 45,000 twins and blood serum from 15,000 twins, which effectively has also transformed the registry into a powerful resource for molecular studies. We here describe the main projects within which the new collections of both biological samples as well as phenotypic measures have been collected. Coverage by year of birth, zygosity determination, ethnic heterogeneity, and influences of in vitro fertilization are also described.

A parental report questionnaire posted to a population sample of 18-month-old twins correctly assigned zygosity in 95%of cases when validated against zygosity determined by identity of polymorphic DNA markers. The questionnaire was as accurate when readministered at 3 years of age, with 96% of children being assigned the same zygosity on both occasions. The results validate the use of parental report questionnaire data to determine zygosity in infancy. Twin Research (2000) 3, 129–133.

The Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS) is an ongoing longitudinal twin study targeting all twins born in Sweden since July 1, 1992. Since 2004, parents of twins are interviewed regarding the children's somatic and mental health and social environment in connection with their 9th or 12th birthdays (CATSS-9/12). By January 2010, 8,610 parental interviews concerning 17,220 twins had been completed, with an overall response rate of 80%. At age 15 (CATSS-15) and 18 (CATSS-18), twins and parents complete questionnaires that, in addition to assessments of somatic and mental health, include measures of personality development and psychosocial adaptation. Twin pairs in CATSS-9/12 with one or both twins screening positive for autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, tic disorders, developmental coordination disorder, learning disorders, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and/or eating problems have been followed with in-depth questionnaires on family, social environment and personality, and subsequently by clinical assessments at age 15 together with randomly selected population controls, including 195 clinically assessed twin pairs from the first 2 year cohorts (CATSS-15/DOGSS). This article describes the cohorts and study groups, data collection, and measures used. Prevalences, distributions, heritability estimates, ages at onset, and sex differences of mental health problems in the CATSS-9/12, that were analyzed and found to be overall comparable to those of other clinical and epidemiological studies. The CATSS study has the potential of answering important questions on the etiology of childhood mental health problems and their role in the development of later adjustment problems.

Body mass index (BMI), a simple anthropometric measure, is the most frequently used measure of adiposity and has been instrumental in documenting the worldwide increase in the prevalence of obesity witnessed during the last decades. Although this increase in overweight and obesity is thought to be mainly due to environmental changes, i.e., sedentary lifestyles and high caloric diets, consistent evidence from twin studies demonstrates high heritability and the importance of genetic differences for normal variation in BMI. We analysed self-reported data on BMI from approximately 37,000 complete twin pairs (including opposite sex pairs) aged 20–29 and 30–39 from eight different twin registries participating in the GenomEUtwin project. Quantitative genetic analyses were conducted and sex differences were explored. Variation in BMI was greater for women than for men, and in both sexes was primarily explained by additive genetic variance in all countries. Sex differences in the variance components were consistently significant. Results from analyses of opposite sex pairs also showed evidence of sex-specific genetic effects suggesting there may be some differences between men and women in the genetic factors that influence variation in BMI. These results encourage the continued search for genes of importance to the body composition and the development of obesity. Furthermore, they suggest that strategies to identify predisposing genes may benefit from taking into account potential sex specific effects.

The Twins' Early Development Study (TEDS) is a large-scale longitudinal study of twins from early childhood through adolescence. Since its conception, TEDS has had as its focus the study of problematic development within the context of normal variation, mainly in the development of language, cognitive and academic abilities and behavior problems from multivariate quantitative and molecular genetic perspectives. TEDS twins have been assessed at 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 and (currently) 12 years of age, and DNA collected from more than 12,000 children. Identified from birth records of twins born in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 1996, more than 15,000 pairs of twins originally enrolled in TEDS, and well over 13,000 pairs — representative of the UK population — remain involved in the study to date. Similar to many other twin and adoption studies, TEDS data indicate that both genetic and environmental influences are important in nearly all areas of behavioral development. Multivariate genetic analyses allow researchers to go beyond this basic nature–nurture question, and TEDS results suggest that, especially in the area of learning abilities and disabilities, genes are generalists and environments are specialists. That is, genes largely contribute to similarity in performance within and between learning abilities and disabilities and across age, whereas the environment contributes to differences in performance. Quantitative genetic findings such as these chart the course for molecular genetic research. The TEDS dataset is proving valuable in genome-wide association research that tries to identify some of the many genes responsible for the ubiquitous heritability of behavior.

The Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) is a large longitudinal sample of twins born in England and Wales between 1994 and 1996. The focus of TEDS has been on cognitive and behavioral development, including difficulties in the context of normal development. TEDS began when multiple births were identified from birth records and the families were invited to take part in the study; 16,810 pairs of twins were originally enrolled in TEDS. More than 10,000 of these twin pairs remain enrolled in the study to date. DNA has been collected for more than 7,000 pairs, and genome-wide genotyping data for two million DNA markers are available for 3,500 individuals. The TEDS families have taken part in studies when the twins were aged 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, and 16 years of age. Data collection is currently underway to assess the adult destinations of the twins as they move from school to university and the workplace. Between January 2012 and December 2014, all of the TEDS twins will turn 18, and the study will transition to an adult sample. TEDS represents an outstanding resource for investigating the developmental effects of genes and environments on complex quantitative traits from childhood to young adulthood and beyond.

Gene-based tests such as versatile gene-based association study (VEGAS) are commonly used following per-single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) GWAS (genome-wide association studies) analysis. Two limitations of VEGAS were that the HapMap2 reference set was used to model the correlation between SNPs and only autosomal genes were considered. HapMap2 has now been superseded by the 1,000 Genomes reference set, and whereas early GWASs frequently ignored the X chromosome, it is now commonly included. Here we have developed VEGAS2, an extension that uses 1,000 Genomes data to model SNP correlations across the autosomes and chromosome X. VEGAS2 allows greater flexibility when defining gene boundaries. VEGAS2 offers both a user-friendly, web-based front end and a command line Linux version. The online version of VEGAS2 can be accessed through https://vegas2.qimrberghofer.edu.au/. The command line version can be downloaded from https://vegas2.qimrberghofer.edu.au/zVEGAS2offline.tgz. The command line version is developed in Perl, R and shell scripting languages; source code is available for further development.

Questionnaire-based zygosity assessment in twins has generally been found to be valid. In this report we evaluate sex- and age-differences in the validity of such questionnairebased classification when using the four questions that have been the basis of zygosity assessment in The Danish Twin Registry for half a century. Three hundred and forty-two male and 531 female twin pairs were zygosity diagnosed using genetic markers and the results compared with the original questionnaire based classification. We found significant differences in the accuracy of questionnaire based zygosity diagnosis when stratifying the data for sex as well as age: males and monozygotic having the highest misclassification. However, even in the group with the highest misclassification rate the frequency was less than 8%. The overall misclassification rate was only 4%, with a clear tendency towards a higher proportion of misclassified monozygotic than dizygotic twins. The results demonstrate that questionnaire based zygosity diagnosis can still be regarded as a valid and valuable classification method for most purposes.

In studies on the Finnish Twin Cohort, we investigate genetic and environmental determinants of common, complex diseases, and their behavioral risk factors in Finland, a genetically unique and culturally homogenous population. We have formed the following databases: 1) Like-sexed twin pairs (13,888 pairs of known zygosity) form the older Twin Cohort. They have participated since 1975 in mail surveys, in clinical examinations for subsamples, and have been followed-up for morbidity using national medical registers; 2) The older Twin Cohort was expanded in 1996 to include opposite-sex pairs born 1938–1957 (c. 8000 pairs); 3) Two, new longitudinal studies of adolescent twins and their families, form a complementary, ongoing study base described in more detail in an accompanying article. Genetic and environmental effects vary over the life-span, and only longitudinal studies in genetically informative data sets permits the evaluation of such effects. Finally, the inclusion of DNA-based genetic information in a phenotypically rich family data base will offer a unique resource for research in genetic epidemiology and behavioral medicine.