ReviewCold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine2021
Twins and Causal Inference: Leveraging Nature's Experiment.
Review in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Positive and negative parenting practices and offspring disruptive behavior: A meta-analytic review of quasi-experimental evidence.Psychological bulletin · 2025Pooled it
- Towards a Greater Understanding of the Role of the Environment: A Systematic Review of Qualitative MZ Twin Differences Studies.Behavior genetics · 2025Pooled it
- Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Genetically Informed Research: Associations Between Parent Anxiety and Offspring Internalizing Problems.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Recreational screen use and internalizing problems from preadolescence to young adulthood in a longitudinal twin cohort with co-twin comparison.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Anthropometric differences between twins at birth and their association with later cognitive performance.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Genetic perspectives on the comorbidity of anxiety and mood disorders with cardiovascular disease.Nature cardiovascular research · 2026Review
- Extending the Use of Mendelian Randomisation With Non-Inherited Variants to Assess Socially Transmitted Parental Exposures Under Assortative Mating.Genetic epidemiology · 2026Article
- How are children's perceptions of the home environment associated with a general psychopathology factor across childhood?Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Article
- Examining the association between cognitive ability and emotional problems across childhood using a genetically informative design: could there be a causal relationship?Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- Investigating Irritability as a Potentially Causal Risk Pathway to Depression Using Two Genetically Informed Designs.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Recreational Screen Use and Internalizing Problems from Preadolescence to Young Adulthood: A population-based Cohort and Co-Twin Control Study.Research square · 2025Article
- The Genetics of Cerebellar Structure and Associations With Cognitive Performance: A Twin Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Multi-Omic Associations of Epigenetic Age Acceleration Are Heterogeneously Shaped by Genetic and Environmental Influences.Aging cell · 2025Article
- Initiation and stability of self-harm in adolescence and early adulthood: investigating social and aetiological factors in twins.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- Multiple social factors are associated with wellbeing when accounting for shared genetic and environmental confounding.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2025Article
- On the Detection of Population Heterogeneity in Causation Between Two Variables: Finite Mixture Modeling of Data Collected from Twin Pairs.Behavior genetics · 2025Article
- A Genetically Informed Study of Digital screen time, Video game play, and Impulsivity in Established Adulthood.Computers in human behavior · 2024Article
- Do Children Cause the Cognitive Stimulation they Receive? Modelling the Direction of Causality.Behavior genetics · 2024Article
- Calculating Within-Pair Difference Scores in the Co-twin Control Design. Effects of Alternative Strategies.Behavior genetics · 2024Article
- Familial effects account for association between chronic pain and past month smoking.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In this review, we discuss how samples comprising monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs can be used for the purpose of strengthening causal inference by controlling for shared influences on exposure and outcome. We begin by briefly introducing how twin data can be used to inform the biometric decomposition of population variance into genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences. We then discuss how extensions to this model can be used to explore whether associations between exposure and outcome survive correction for shared etiology (common causes). We review several analytical approaches that can be applied to twin data for this purpose. These include multivariate structural equation models, cotwin control methods, direction of causation models (cross-sectional and longitudinal), and extended family designs used to assess intergenerational associations. We conclude by highlighting some of the limitations and considerations that researchers should be aware of when using twin data for the purposes of interrogating causal hypotheses.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.