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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Communication between identical twins
— health behavior and social factors are associated with longevity that is greater among identical than fraternal US World War II veteran twins | | Author(s) | Malcolm D Zaretsky |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, vol 58A, no 6, June 2003 |
| Pages | pp 566-572 |
| Keywords | Twins ; Older men ; Communication ; Longevity ; Health [elderly] ; Tobacco smoking ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Multivariate analysis is applied to current mortality data for 26,974 male twins with known zygosites of the US National Academy of Science - National Research Council World War II Veteran Twins Registry. This analysis is applied to their health, social behaviour and personal histories, as collected for two survey questionnaires distributed in 1967 and 1983 (with 14,300 and 9,475 responses respectively). To explain this difference in longevity, social health and personal history factors are re-evaluated for associations with longevity. Survival functions of identical and fraternal twins differed significantly. Median lifetimes were 82 years for identical and 80.5 years for fraternal twins. The correlation between lifetimes of identical twin partners was greater than that of fraternal twins. For identical but not fraternal twins, the risk of mortality was significantly lower for twin partners who communicated one or more times a month, compared to those communicating less frequently. Distributions of communication, exercise level and smoking prevalence were more beneficial with regard to longevity in identical than in fraternal twins as a group. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-030718207 A |
| Classmark | SVR: BC: U: BGA: CC: ETT: F: 3F: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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