In 1984, Hrubec and Robinette published what was arguably the first review of the role of twins in medical research. The authors acknowledged a growing distinction between two categories of twin studies: those aimed at assessing genetic contributions to disease and those aimed at assessing environmental contributions while controlling for genetic variation. They concluded with a brief section on recently founded twin registries that had begun to provide unprecedented access to twins for medical research. Here we offer an overview of the twin research that, in our estimation, best represents the field has progress since 1984. We start by summarizing what we know about twinning. We then focus on the value of twin study designs to differentiate between genetic and environmental influences on health and on emerging applications of twins in multiple areas of medical research. We finish by describing how twin registries and networks are accelerating twin research worldwide.

中文翻译：

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双胞胎对健康和医学研究的价值：三分之一世纪的进步

1984 年，Hrubec 和 Robinette 发表了可以说是对双胞胎在医学研究中作用的第一次评论。作者承认两类双胞胎研究之间的区别越来越大：旨在评估遗传对疾病的贡献的研究和旨在评估环境贡献同时控制遗传变异的研究。他们最后简要介绍了最近建立的双胞胎登记处，这些登记处已经开始为医学研究提供前所未有的双胞胎访问权限。在这里，我们概述了孪生研究，据我们估计，该研究最能代表该领域自 1984 年以来取得的进展。我们首先总结我们对孪生的了解。然后，我们专注于双胞胎研究设计的价值，以区分遗传和环境对健康的影响，以及双胞胎在多个医学研究领域的新兴应用。最后，我们描述了双胞胎登记处和网络如何加速全球双胞胎研究。