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Performance on neurocognitive tests by co-twins to dementia cases compared to normal control twins
Margaret Gatz1, Amy Fiske, Chandra A Reynolds
1Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90089-1061, USA. gatz@usc.edu
Abstract:
Nondemented co-twins of twins who were diagnosed as demented were compared to randomly selected members of normal control twin pairs in which both members of the pair were nondemented. Nondemented co-twins included 23 monozygotic and 62 dizygotic twins; there were 27 normal control twins. Both monozygotic and dizygotic nondemented co-twins of dementia cases scored significantly lower than normal control twins on 5 of 10 cognitive tests. Moreover, monozygotic co-twins of dementia cases had a generally lower score profile than dizygotic co-twins of dementia cases did. These findings show that being at greater genetic risk for dementia is reflected in cognitive performance even in the absence of a diagnosis of dementia.
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