Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Understanding coronary artery disease using twin studies
  1. Massimo Mangino,
  2. Tim Spector
  1. Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Tim Spector, Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, St Thomas’ Hospital Campus, Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7EH, UK; tim.spector{at}kcl.ac.uk

Abstract

Twins have fascinated human communities since the beginning of recorded history. In cardiovascular research, twin studies played a pivotal role in the discovery of the genetic basis of coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction and most of their associated risk factors. Matched for age, prenatal and postnatal environmental factors, discordant monozygous twin pairs provide a means to enhance the power to analyse epigenetic and metagenomic mechanisms. In the near future, combining the monozygous discordant twin study design with the recent advance of the sequencing technologies it will be possible to explore the complexity of the gene-environment relationships and individual variability to provide important insights into the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease/myocardial infarction.

  • Coronary Artery Disease

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.