Older Australian Twins Study

Dr John Crawford, Dr Jiyang Jiang, Dr Kristan Kang, Dr Nicole Kochan, Dr Karen Mather Dr Anbu Thalamuthu, Associate Professor Wei Wen

OATS commenced in 2007 as a collaboration between CHeBA, the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR).

Since then, we have assessed a total of 727 participants on up to four occasions - totalling over 1700 assessments. Since 2017, OATS staff have been located exclusively at CHeBA, UNSW Sydney. The key objective of OATS is to identify genetic and environmental factors that Dr Vibeke Catts, contribute to healthy brain ageing, which is best done with a twin sample, where the OATS Coordinator genetic difference between identical (share same code) and non-identical twin (share 505 of code) pairs allows us to determine the relative contribution of genes and environment on specific outcomes.

Over its lifetime, OATS has contributed to 67 scientific publications. A minimum of 39 students have utilised OATS data for their research projects. About one-third of these students are/were medical doctor trainees, who perform small research projects as part of their medical degree, the remainder being higher degree students looking to obtain a PhD. Currently 10 Higher Degree students utilise OATS data in their studies.

OATS gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Twins Research Australia who mediated the initial contact to many of our participants, as well as funding received from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and the contribution of our participants, project staff and many collaborators in Australia and beyond.

Highlights from 2020:

ƒ 17 scientific papers published. ƒ Surveyed our participants about their experiences in participating in OATS with the key motivation contributing to medical research, for the betterment of the participant’s own health but also for society as a whole and for future generations. OATS participation has led to early discovery of health issues, in some cases allowing for preventative or early treatment of otherwise very serious conditions. welcomed

Dr Amanda Selwood as Research Assistant, who is a psychologist and as an identical twin herself has enjoyed engaging with our study participants. ƒ Welcomed three new PhD students: Mr Toyin Abdulsalam will investigate the combined contribution of the genetic code and genetic modifications to gene and protein expression in ageing and longevity; Mr

Chao Dong will work with our neuroimaging experts to investigate genetic and environmental influences on human brain changes in ageing and Ms Annabel Matison will be investigating the link between nutrition and the risk of depression using data from OATS and our collaborators in the IGEMS consortia. ƒ Continued our contribution to the IGEMS (Interplay of Genes and Environment across Multiple Studies) consortium, a collaboration between 18 international twin studies representing 76,000 twin participants.

This large sample size allows us to look at differences in risk and protective factors between men and women in non-identical twin pairs consisting of one male and one female twin. It also allows us to look at the contributing factors to discordance (where one twin within a pair is exposed to a risk factor or has a disease and the other does not) in genetically identical twin. Much work that has gone into collating data across these studies and ensuring different measures of health and cognition used in different studies are comparable and able to be analysed together. This groundwork yielded 2 publications in 2020, with several more in the pipeline.