hehehehehe.....Twins not only have a bestie from birth —
they also live longer than singletons. And those two factors may be
related, according to new University of Washington research.
While twins have been subjects in countless studies that try to separate the effects of nature from nurture, a recent study in PLOS ONE
is the first to actually look at what being a twin means for life
expectancy. Analysis shows that twins have lower mortality rates for
both sexes throughout their lifetimes.
“We find that at nearly every age,
identical twins survive at higher proportions than fraternal twins, and
fraternal twins are a little higher than the general population,” said
lead author David Sharrow, a UW postdoctoral researcher in aquatic and
fishery sciences.
The results suggest a significant health benefit for close social connections.
The data comes from the Danish Twin
Registry, one of the oldest repositories of information about twins. The
authors looked at 2,932 pairs of same-sex twins who survived past the
age of 10 who were born in Denmark between 1870 and 1900, so all had a
complete lifespan. They then compared their ages at death with data for
the overall Danish population.
For men, they found that the peak
benefit of having a twin came in the subjects’ mid-40s. That difference
is about 6 percentage points, meaning that if out of 100 boys in the
general population, 84 were still alive at age 45, then for twins that
number was 90. For women, the peak mortality advantage came in their
early 60s, and the difference was about 10 percentage points.
Sciencedaily.com
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