Twins eye study in Tasmania (TEST): rationale and methodology to recruit and examine twins.
Visual impairment is a leading cause of morbidity and poor quality of life in our community. Unravelling the mechanisms underpinning important blinding diseases could allow preventative or curative steps to be implemented. Twin siblings provide a unique opportunity in biology to discover genes associated with numerous eye diseases and ocular biometry. Twins are particularly useful for quantitative trait analysis through genome-wide association and linkage studies. Although many studies involving twins rely on twin registries, we present our approach to the Twins Eye Study in Tasmania to provide insight into possible recruitment strategies, expected participation rates and potential examination strategies that can be considered by other researchers for similar studies. Five separate avenues for cohort recruitment were adopted: (1) piggy-backing existing studies where twins had been recruited, (2) utilizing the national twin registry, (3) word-of-mouth and local media publicity, (4) directly approaching schools, and finally (5) collaborating with other research groups studying twins.
Mackey
David A
DA
Lions Eye Institute, Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science, University of Western Australia, Australia. D.Mackey@utas.edu.au
Mackinnon
Jane R
JR
Brown
Shayne A
SA
Kearns
Lisa S
LS
Ruddle
Jonathan B
JB
Sanfilippo
Paul G
PG
Sun
Cong
C
Hammond
Christopher J
CJ
Young
Terri L
TL
Martin
Nicholas G
NG
Hewitt
Alex W
AW
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004200:Diseases in Twins / Q000235:genetics*; D005128:Eye Diseases / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010641:Phenotype; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D012042:Registries; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013648:Tasmania; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic / Q000235:genetics; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics