Best wishes for the holiday season & 2025

Our heartfelt gratitude to our members and supporters for your help throughout the year. Please enjoy the stories below about our studies in 2024, and discoveries that are helping to improve the lives of many. None of these achievements would have been possible without twins and their families. We wish you and your family a happy, safe and relaxing festive season.  

Please note, TRA will be closing for the Christmas/New Year holiday period, from 5.00pm Thursday 19 December until Tuesday 14 January 2025. We will return on Wednesday 15  January 2025, and thank you for your patience while we respond to any queries.

Women’s Health Study

The Women’s Health Study is an extension of the long-running Twins and Sisters Study, aimed at understanding the interplay between genetic and lifestyle factors, mammographic density, and breast cancer risk. The study also seeks to explore the possible underlying connections between gestational diabetes and the later development of type 2 diabetes.

We mourn the passing of the late Professor John Hopper who was the lead researcher of this study. While we miss John and his peerless leadership, thankfully he has built an incredible network of talented researchers who can complete the work and fulfill his vision in his honour.

The study involves answering a 20-minute questionnaire and providing consent for researchers to access your digital mammograms. Identical and non-identical female twins aged 18-80 are eligible. Find out more here

We will be contacting eligible TRA members who have not already received an invitation to participate in 2025.

Feedback available from Facial Expressions Study

Thank you to the 827 twin pairs and for the 2144 responses to the Understanding Facial Expressions Study that finished data collection in September. The researchers are very grateful for the time and effort everyone took to participate, especially since some of the tasks were quite challenging.

Congratulations to the prize draw winners who’ve been notified. An email has been sent providing individual results to those that completed the study in full. If you completed the survey but did not receive results, please check your junk or spam folders for an email from tra-twinstudy@unimelb.edu.au – and if still no luck please contact us.

Happy 50th birthday AMBA!

Congratulations to our long-time partner, the Australian Multiple Birth Association, celebrating its 50th birthday in 2024! 

TRA supported a number of anniversary events to thank AMBA members for their incredible work over 50 years. Our association dates back nearly 45 years when the Diamond Valley Mothers of Twins Club sought to understand the differences between their twins and single children. As a result, our first collaborative study began, called the Latrobe Twin Study.

An especially memorable night for us all was the recent AMBA 50th Anniversary Black and White Ball hosted by TRA at the University of Melbourne. It was one of the last official engagements of the late TRA Director, Professor John Hopper (pictured below, second from right, with the TRA team).

TRA also ran a workshop at AMBA’s Annual Convention, seeking AMBA member feedback on research that would benefit them and their families most. Experts shared research showing the financial disadvantage, increased mental health concerns, and greater risks in pregnancy and birth for multiple-birth families as well as the need for more resources and training for health professionals. A report of the workshop outcomes will be shared in due course. 

Our former patron appointed Queen of Denmark

It was the late TRA Director John Hopper’s idea to seek the support of the then Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (a mother of twins herself) to become the International Patron of the Australian and Danish twin registries. No-one was more excited than John when she agreed! The Crown Princess joined us in 2013, and John met her in Sydney and Copenhagen when she visited twin research studies. 

Earlier this year, John congratulated her on becoming Her Majesty, The Queen of Denmark in a letter on behalf of TRA. More recently her office advised TRA, due to her many additional duties as Queen, she would be unable to continue her role as our Patron. John was full of praise for her support of our research across 10 years. 

“She has brought a unique perspective to our work, combining her interests in health and medical research, her experiences as a mother of twins, and a heritage shared across two countries – Australia and Denmark,” John said at the time. “We have highly valued her contribution to twin research globally for more than a decade. We know she will bring the same passion, dedication and unique approach to her new role, and we wish her every success.”

TRA lends expertise to new Centre of Research Excellence

Through the vision of our late Director, Professor John Hopper, twins research is playing a crucial role in two Centres of Research Excellence (CREs) that have received funding from the Australian Government’s National Health and Medical Research Council.

These CREs are in personalised breast cancer screening (MyBRISK) and genetic epidemiology with a focus on diabetes, mental health and cancer (Genetic Epidemiology Research Alliance) both based at the University of Melbourne.

Based on TRA’s previous experience as a CRE, and on our enormous depth of data – which has been derived from decades of research – we have contributed significantly to these two new CREs that are undertaking disease-specific population health research. 

As John explained previously in his support of the two CREs: “Our unparalleled expertise in twins research is now educating a new generation of researchers in collecting and analysing data as well as translating findings into population and clinical use. 

“There is an unprecedented amount of health data available in today’s world. The future challenge for medical research is bringing health databases together to enable more efficient and effective analysis and, ultimately, finding solutions faster to our world’s most pressing health concerns.”

All of us – TRA researchers, members, collaborators and staff – are committed to realising John's vision into the future.

Recap of our 2024 studies

The TRA team sent nearly 20,000 study invitations to our members in 2024. We are very grateful for your amazing responses and giving your time and efforts to studies throughout the year, the key ones being:

• Restless Legs Syndrome Twin and Family Study (past participant approach)
• Health Behaviour Study (qualitative Interviews)
• Genetic Basis of Epilepsy (past participant approach)
• Understanding Facial Expressions
• Women’s Health Study (half-way through recruitment)

Are your twin and family members missing out on our study invitations?

There are many twins and higher-order multiples on our database with whom we’ve lost contact. Could you help us to reconnect by encouraging them to update their email addresses with us? This ensures they won’t miss out on invitations to exciting new studies coming up in 2025! 

• Parents of multiples: Have your multiple children recently turned 18? Or did they turn 18 a while ago and are not receiving correspondence from us? Parents stop receiving study invitations on their twins’ behalf once they turn 18. So it is doubly important for these twins to update their contact details if they wish to continue to participate in studies.    
• Multiples: Does your twin or triplet(s) receive our correspondence? If not, it’s likely we don’t have a valid email for them. 

Please encourage your twin or family members to update their contact details here.