Original ResearchFull Report: Clinical—Alimentary TractHeritability and Familial Aggregation of Diverticular Disease: A Population-Based Study of Twins and Siblings
Section snippets
Subjects and Methods
We studied familial aggregation of diverticular disease, including diverticular complications and asymptomatic diverticulosis in siblings, and in a separate analysis compared the phenotypic similarity of monozygotic and dizygotic twins and estimated the heritability of diverticular disease.
Descriptive Data
We identified 142,123 incident cases with diverticular disease recorded at a hospitalization from 1977 to 2011 or an outpatient hospital visit from 1995 to 2011 in Denmark. Of these, 13,268 were born after 1952, 10,586 had an identifiable mother in the Civil Registration System, and 10,420 were index cases with a total of 16,374 siblings. We followed up the siblings for a total of 79,241 person-years. The overall population incidence of a hospital admission or visit for diverticular disease in
Discussion
In this nationwide population-based study, we found strong evidence for a heritable contribution to the etiology of diverticular disease. Siblings of index cases were 3 times more likely to develop diverticular disease than the general population, and measures of twin similarity were consistently higher for monozygotic twin pairs than for dizygotic twin pairs. The RRs were greater among siblings of cases who were hospitalized or had surgery associated with a diagnosis of diverticular disease.
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This article has an accompanying continuing medical education activity on page e14. Learning Objective: Upon completion of this CME activity, successful learners will be able to explain the role for genetic factors in diverticular disease.
Conflicts of interest The authors disclose no conflicts.
Funding Supported by the Clinical Epidemiology Research Foundation, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.