Under the direction of Dr. Marian Willinger, the PPB held this workshop on April 14-15, 2003, to evaluate research to date and to identify new approaches that use twin cohorts to elucidate mechanisms of fetal origins of health throughout the lifespan. Twin cohorts enable investigators to separate environmental and genetic effects through comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic pairs, and to investigate the contribution of maternal factors using within-pair analysis. Studies in the literature, which explore fetal origin hypotheses, vary in their capacity to fully exploit the opportunities that twin cohorts provide.
