THE KAISER-PERMANENTE WOMEN TWINS STUDY DATA SET

The Kaiser-Permanente Women Twins Study began with the establishment of a large registry of twins at Kaiser-Permanente, a managed health care program in Oakland, California. In 1978-79, 434 pairs of women twins, 255 monozygotic and 179 dizygotic, with average age 41 years, were recruited from this registry for a study of coronary heart disease risk factors. Previous analyses of these data have shown moderate heritability for blood pressure and high heritability for lipids, even after adjustment for differential environmental covariance between twin types. For GAW8, the data provided included age, race, weight, height, blood pressure, lipids, smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, degree of contact between co-twins, menstrual status, and medication for hypertension. Exam 2 of this cohort was completed in 1989-90 and has recently reported nearly complete heritability for lipoprotein(a). (C) 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.