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Twin Studies in Congenital Heart Diseases*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

G. Jörgensen*
Affiliation:
Institut für Humangenetik der Universität, Göttingen
*
Institut für Humangenetik der Universität, Nikolausberger Weg 23, 34 Göttingen, Germany

Extract

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Uchida and Rowe (1957), Lamy et al (1957), as well as Campbell (1961), were of the opinion that genetic factors do not play an important role in the genesis of congenital heart deformities. These authors could not find any concordantly affected pair among a total of 32 MZ twin pairs. Impressive family case reports and systematic investigations (Fuhrmann, 1970; Jörgensen, 1970) do not support this assumption. The results of twin investigations by Nora et al (1967) also contradict previous results. Among a total of 37 twin pairs these authors found 6/13 MZ and 1/24 DZ concordantly affected pairs.

Our own investigations began in autumn, 1966 and were recently completed. With the help of the registrar of birth offices and the cardiological team of the University of Göttingen (Prof. Dr. A. J. Beuren, Prof. Dr. H.-E. Hoffmeister, Prof. Dr. J. Koncz, Prof. Dr. J. Stoermer), we were able to find 50 index patients, each being a member of a twin pair, among 2427 propositi with different congenital heart defects.

Our own results are shown in Tab. I: 4/21 MZ (19.0 ± 8.6%) and 1/24 DZ (4.2 ± 4.1%) are concordantly affected. In five cases, the zygosity of the twins, as well as the diagnosis of respective cotwins, (stillborn or perinatal-dead) is unknown.

Type
Session 14 - Twin Studies in Cardiovascular Diseases
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1970

Footnotes

*

This investigation was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

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