Investigating Genetic and Environmental Substrates of the Relationship between Positive Mental Health and Biological Aging-A Study Protocol.

Background: The Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) funded a 30-month project (July 2021-January 2024) to conduct a twin study of the relationships between Positive Mental Health (PMH) and cellular longevity. Only a few previous studies have focused on the biomarkers of aging in relation to psychological well-being, and none of them exploited the potential of the twin design.

Method: In this project, following the standard procedures of the Italian Twin Registry (ITR), we aim to recruit 200 adult twin pairs enrolled in the ITR.

Attitude and concerns of healthy individuals regarding post-mortem brain donation. A qualitative study on a nation-wide sample in Italy.

Background: Collecting post-mortem brain tissue is essential, especially from healthy "control" individuals, to advance knowledge on increasingly common neurological and mental disorders. Yet, healthy individuals, on which this study is focused, are still understudied. The aim of the study was to explore, among healthy potential brain donors and/or donors' relatives, attitude, concerns and opinion about post-mortem brain donation (PMBD).

The Italian Twin Registry: An Update at 18 Years From Its Inception.

The Italian Twin Registry (ITR), established in 2001, is a population-based registry of voluntary twins. To date, it consists of approximately 29,000 twins who gave their consent to participate in the studies proposed by the ITR research group. The database comprises 11,500 monozygotic and 16,700 dizygotic twins resident throughout the country and belonging to a wide age range (from 0 to 95 years, mean 36.

Genetic influence on femoral plaque and its relationship with carotid plaque: an international twin study.

To disentangle genetic and environmental influences on the development of femoral plaques using a population of adult twins. To evaluate the potential role of shared genetic and environmental factors in the co-occurrence of femoral and carotid plaques. The sample included 566 twins belonging to 164 monozygotic (MZ) and 119 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, who underwent peripheral arterial assessment by B-mode ultrasound in different centers.

Femoral Artery Ultrasound Examination.

We compared intima-media thickness (IMT) and the prevalence of plaques in the common carotid artery (CCA) and common femoral artery (CFA) in apparently healthy participants. This multicenter study included 322 participants (59.9% female; age 20-78 years, mean 52.

Genetic and environmental bases of the interplay between magical ideation and personality.

Sub-threshold psychotic symptoms are quite commonly present in general population. Among these, Magical Ideation (MI) has been proved to be a valid predictor of psychosis. However, the genetic and environmental influences on the interplay between MI and personality have not fully been explored.

An update on the Italian Twin Register: advances in cohort recruitment, project building and network development.

The Italian Twin Register has been in place for more than 10 years. Since its establishment, it has been focusing, on the one hand, on a continuous update of the existing information, and on the other hand, on new phenotypes and sample collection. Demographic data on about 140,000 twins have been updated using the municipality registries.

Clumsiness and psychopathology: causation or shared etiology? A twin study with the CBCL 6-18 questionnaire in a general school-age population sample.

In a sample of 398 twin pairs aged 8-17 belonging to the Italian Twin Registry we explored the extent to which physical clumsiness/motor problems covary with a broad spectrum of behavioral problems identified by the Child Behavior Checklist 6-18/DSM oriented scales, and the causes of such covariation. Only Anxiety and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity (ADH) Problems maintained significant correlation with Clumsiness after partialling out the effects of the other problem scales. By the co-twin control method we found no indication of clear, direct causal effect of Clumsiness upon Anxiety or ADH Problems, or vice versa.