low-ish co-occurance of inflamm bowel disease in identical twin pairs

April 7, 2005

Looks like the co-occurance of Crohns is probably under 50% in

identical twins; it may be significantly lower, and it is quite low in UC:

Anyone know of any identical twin studies in other diseases of interest?

There are certain possible objections to these studies... one of them

had to solicit volunteers, which is not ideal in epidemiology. Neither

seems to have confined itself to people over 40, which ideally would

have been good because people who dont have IBD by 40 are likely to

have " missed their chance " thus yielding a solider picture.

As a further possible complication, this paper has refs on suggestions

that identical twins may not be 100% identical, which was news to me:

and also contains speculation about the possible impact of non-DNA

partially-inherited gene expression regulation factors, something I

never heard of before, which are suggested to perhaps explain the

predominantly-matrilineal heritability of IBD risk.

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