Familial Risk and Heritability of Cancer Among Twins in Nordic Countries.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Estimates of familial cancer risk from population-based studies are essential components of cancer risk prediction.

Objective

To estimate familial risk and heritability of cancer types in a large twin cohort.

Design, setting, and participants

Prospective study of 80,309 monozygotic and 123,382 same-sex dizygotic twin individuals (N = 203,691) within the population-based registers of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Twins were followed up a median of 32 years between 1943 and 2010. There were 50,990 individuals who died of any cause, and 3804 who emigrated and were lost to follow-up.

Exposures

Shared environmental and heritable risk factors among pairs of twins.

Main outcomes and measures

The main outcome was incident cancer. Time-to-event

SUBMITTER: Mucci LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5498110 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature