{"id":2525,"date":"2019-01-18T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T15:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/163.180.4.222\/lab\/?p=2525"},"modified":"2019-01-18T00:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T15:20:00","slug":"what-100000-twins-can-tell-us-about-nature-versus-nurture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=2525","title":{"rendered":"What 100,000 twins can tell us about nature versus nurture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nature beats nurture when it comes to causing diseases, study finds<\/h3>\n

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Genes play a larger overall role than environment or socioeconomic factors in causing human diseases, according to a comprehensive analysis of health insurance data, including a large cohort of twins, according to a\u00a0Nature Genetics<\/em>\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0published Monday.<\/p>\n

What’s new:<\/strong>\u00a0Nearly 40% of human diseases can be linked to genetic factors, while 25% are at least partly driven from the environment. However, socioeconomic factors only play a modest role, the scientists find.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Why it matters:<\/strong>\u00a0Information on what causes diseases \u2014 or even what\u00a0doesn’t<\/em>\u00a0cause diseases \u2014 can inform future research, study author Chirag Lakhani tells Axios.<\/p>\n

“We want to know: Would genetics be a more helpful line of research or not,” Lakhani says. “If not, what are the environmental things we should be trying to measure.”<\/div>\n

What they did:<\/strong>\u00a0Using de-identified data from Aetna insurance (which didn’t fund the study), the team from Harvard Medical School and Australia’s University of Queensland examined records from nearly 45 million Americans, including more than 56,000 twin pairs and 724,000 sibling pairs.<\/p>\n