Published September 11, 2024 | Version v1

Lifestyle differences between co-twins are associated with decreased similarity in their internal and external exposome profiles

  • 1. ROR icon Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland
  • 2. ROR icon University of Helsinki
  • 3. ROR icon Universitat Ramon Llull
  • 4. ROR icon Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili
  • 5. ROR icon Barcelona Institute for Global Health
  • 6. University of Eastern Finland
  • 7. ROR icon National Institute for Public Health and the Environment
  • 8. ROR icon Minerva Foundation

Description

Whether differences in lifestyle between co-twins are reflected in differences in their internal or external exposome profiles remains largely underexplored. We therefore investigated whether withinpair differences in lifestyle were associated with within-pair differences in exposome profiles across four domains: the external exposome, proteome, metabolome and epigenetic age acceleration (EAA). For each domain, we assessed the similarity of co-twin profiles using Gaussian similarities in up to 257 young adult same-sex twin pairs (54% monozygotic). We additionally tested whether similarity in one domain translated into greater similarity in another. Results suggest that a lower degree of similarity in co-twins’ exposome profiles was associated with greater differences in their behavior and substance use. The strongest association was identified between excessive drinking behavior and the external exposome. Overall, our study demonstrates how social behavior and especially substance use are connected to the internal and external exposomes, while controlling for familial confounders.

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Additional details

Funding

European Commission
Equal-Life - Early Environmental quality and life-course mental health effects 874724

Dates

Available
2024-09-11