Twins Eye Study in Tasmania (TEST): Rationale and Methodology to Recruit and Examine Twins

Visual impairment is a leading cause of morbidityand poor quality of life in our community.Unravelling the mechanisms underpinning importantblinding diseases could allow preventative or curativesteps to be implemented. Twin siblings provide aunique opportunity in biology to discover genes associatedwith numerous eye diseases and ocularbiometry. Twins are particularly useful for quantitativetrait analysis through genome-wide associationand linkage studies. Although many studies involvingtwins rely on twin registries, we present ourapproach to the Twins Eye Study in Tasmania toprovide insight into possible recruitment strategies,expected participation rates and potential examinationstrategies that can be considered by otherresearchers for similar studies. Five separateavenues for cohort recruitment were adopted: (1)piggy-backing existing studies where twins had beenrecruited, (2) utilizing the national twin registry, (3)word-of-mouth and local media publicity, (4) directly approaching schools, and finally (5) collaborating with other research groups studying twins.