Early-life mortality risks in opposite-sex and same-sex twins: a Danish cohort study of the twin testosterone transfer hypothesis.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

To investigate the twin testosterone transfer (TTT) hypothesis by comparing early-life mortality risks of opposite-sex (OS) and same-sex (SS) twins during the first 15 years of life.

Methods

We performed a population-based cohort study to compare mortality in OS and SS twins. We included 68,629 live-born Danish twins from 1973 to 2009 identified through the Danish Twin Registry and performed piecewise stratified Cox regression and log-binomial regression.

Results

Among 1933 deaths, we found significantly higher mortality for twin boys than for twin girls. For both sexes, OS twins had lower mortality than SS twins; the difference persisted for the first year of life for boys and for the first week of life for girls.

Conclusions

Although the mortality ris

SUBMITTER: Ahrenfeldt LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5439218 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature