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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Gene-environment Interaction Models to Unmask Susceptibility Mechanisms in Parkinson's Disease
Published on: January 7, 2014
Effects of the family environment: gene-environment interaction and passive gene-environment correlation
Thomas S Price1, Sara R Jaffee
1Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. tom@spirit.gcrc.upenn.edu
Abstract:
The classical twin study provides a useful resource for testing hypotheses about how the family environment influences children's development, including how genes can influence sensitivity to environmental effects. However, existing statistical models do not account for the possibility that children can inherit exposure to family environments (i.e., passive gene-environment correlation). The authors introduce a method to simultaneously estimate the effects of passive gene- environment correlation and gene- environment interaction and use it to investigate the relationship between chaos in the home and verbal ability in a large sample of 4-year-old twins.
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