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 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 resourcesthe longitudinal phenotyping, the extended pedigree structures and the multigeneration genotypingallow for future twin-family research that will contribute to gene discovery, causality modeling, and studies of genetic and cultural inheritance.

Urinary Amine and Organic Acid Metabolites Evaluated as Markers for Childhood Aggression: The ACTION Biomarker Study

“…Twins from the longitudinal Netherlands Twin Register [NTR; (26,27)] were invited for participation in the biomarker study based on their longitudinal data on aggressive behavior at ages 3, 7, and/or 9/10 years. At, or around these ages, parents of twins received surveys that included the Dutch version of the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA) Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for pre-school children (1.5-5 years) or school-aged children [6-18 years; (28)].…”

Causes of Variation in Food Preference in the Netherlands

“…Fifty-three twins were excluded from analyses due to missing information on zygosity. The zygosity of the same-sex twins was determined by DNA markers or the response on the standard survey questions about physical similarity between the twins (Ligthart et al, 2019). In total, 1087 monozygotic males (MZM; 338 complete pairs), 633 dizygotic males (DZM; 165 complete pairs), 2929 monozygotic females (MZF; 1079 complete pairs), 1407 dizygotic females (DZF; 425 complete pairs), 914 male-female opposite sex twins (DOSmf; 213 complete pairs) and 863 female-male opposite sex twins (DOSfm; 221 complete pairs) were included in the genetic analyses.…”

Genetic and Environmental Causes of Individual Differences in Borderline Personality Disorder Features and Loneliness are Partially Shared

“…Twins took part in studies on health and wellbeing at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia (QIMRB; see Lynskey et al, 2012) and the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR; Boomsma et al, 2002;Ligthart et al, 2019). The Australian sample included 4820 twins from 3047 families distributed in 1773 complete pairs (265 monozygotic male pairs (MZM), 546 monozygotic female pairs (MZF), 176 dizygotic male pairs (DZM), 412 dizygotic female pairs (DZF), and356 opposite sex pairs (OS) and 1274 single twins with a mean age of 28.93 years (SD = 5.8, range = 15-40).…”