Abstract
This review offers an update on research conducted with FinnTwin12 (FT12), the youngest of the three Finnish Twin Cohorts. FT12 was designed as a two-stage study. In the first stage, we conducted multiwave questionnaire research enrolling all eligible twins born in Finland during 1983–1987 along with their biological parents. In stage 2, we intensively studied a subset of these twins with in-school assessments at age 12 and semistructured poly-diagnostic interviews at age 14. At baseline, parents of intensively studied twins were administered the adult version of the interview. Laboratory studies with repeat interviews, neuropsychological tests, and collection of DNA were made of intensively studied twins during follow-up in early adulthood. The basic aim of the FT12 study design was to obtain information on individual, familial and school/neighborhood risks for substance use/abuse prior to the onset of regular tobacco and alcohol use and then track trajectories of use and abuse and their consequences into adulthood. But the longitudinal assessments were not narrowly limited to this basic aim, and with multiwave, multirater assessments from ages 11 to 12, the study has created a richly informative data set for analyses of gene–environment interactions of both candidate genes and genomewide measures with measured risk-relevant environments. Because 25 years have elapsed since the start of the study, we are planning a fifth-wave follow-up assessment.
Highlights
As with the Older Finnish Twin Cohort and the FinnTwin16 Cohort both reviewed this year in Twin Research and Human Genetics, FinnTwin12 (FT12), most recently reviewed in Kaprio (2013), is a population-based longitudinal study
Appreciative of evidence emerging that substance use is best understood from a developmental perspective with some behavioral precursors evident in childhood (Rose, 1998), FT12 was designed for baseline assessments at an early age preceding onset of regular exposure to alcohol, tobacco or other substances
Parents of intensively studied twins were interviewed at baseline with the Semi-Structured Assessment for Genetics of Alcohol (SSAGA; Bucholz et al, 1994), and when the twins reached age 14, they were interviewed with the adolescent version of SSAGA
Summary
Parents and with peers, adding measures of school, neighborhood and community environments, and information on health behaviors, pubertal maturation and lifestyle factors. A total of 2705 families (87% of all identified twins in the five birth cohorts, living with one or both biological parents and eligible for study) returned the initial family questionnaire mailed late in the year in which successive twin birth cohorts reached age 11. Parent and teacher ratings of all twins were collected at baseline, with high participation rates; 92% of the parents and 93% of the twins’ classroom teachers returned ratings Cooperation at these initial stages was not associated with family structure, area of residence within Finland, parental age, or sex or zygosity of twin-pairs. A random sample (of predetermined n) was selected from each birth cohort; to that random sample, all remaining twins in that
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