HealthTwiSt
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Twins and Functional Food
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Saturday, 04.02.2012
Please select:
Service description
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Your asset: Your field of expertise is nutrigenomics or you are developing nutritional ingredients with health effects, innovative wellness products or nutriceuticals. Your products are to be launched in the near future.
Your need: You are looking for a fast and efficient way for a proof of effect with respect to the benefits of your product in humans. But your access to trial populations is limited. You require verification of small or preventive effects which may result in prohibitive costs due to sample size and study duration.
Our support: Based on our HealthTwiSt register, you gain access to a model system with twins as the perfectly matched controls. In a ‘co-twin control design’ we compare each person using your product with the related twin, almost identical in biology and behavior. This approach results in a dramatic reduction in sample size, saving you financial resources and giving you shorter time-to-market cycles.
We provide
- Study set-up
- Recruitment of twin pairs based on the HealthTwiSt register
- Study management
- Statistical analysis, reporting
- Data management
Benefits of twins-based analyses
- Smaller sample sizes by reduction of variability between cases and control group, perfect match for age, genetic background, life style including nutritional habits
- Reduction in study duration by fast recruitment from existing pool of twins and reduced number of subjects
- Reduction of expenses
- Highly motivated probands
- Fast recruitment
- Excellent compliance in long term studies
- Superior data quality
- Extension of studies to include additional research projects
- Variety of methodological approaches depending on your research needs
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Conventional case-control design, unrelated subjects 
- Long term effects can not be tested within subjects as they require a control group
- Statistical proof of effect impossible within reasonable samplesize
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Co-twin control design 
- Long term effects are tested in twin pairs, with one twin receiving treatment and the co-twin as perfectly matched control, receiving placebo if appropriate
- Variance within groups becomes irrelevant, basic variance within twin pairs is small due to matching
- Statistical proof of effect with increased power due to paired analysis, resulting in sample sizes fitting your budget
- Example: data as above, proof of significant effect
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HealthTwiSt-Register – Subject pool
Fast recruitment of informative subjects. Selection using clinical and genetic data, based on our proprietary register of twins and families
- Existing pool of > 1000 twin pairs
- Database of associated cardiovascular and metabolic data
- Fast access to subject DNA
- Sequential access to subjects through regular contact management
- Informed consent according to international standards
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Study design, management and analysis – One-stop-shop
- Study set-up and design in close collaboration with your scientists concerning inclusion / exclusion criteria, measures, time frame, power calculation, case record forms, data base
- Study management including logistics, time management, biological samples
- Established clinical partners with specific infrastructure
- Complete statistical analysis, reporting, assistance with scientific publications
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Data management
- Maintenance of twin and family register
- Set-up of questionnaires
- Management of clinical data
- Data management with respect to your specific needs
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Conclusion:
HealthTwiSt combines genetically meaningful family structures and highly informative clinical data sets. You do not only obtain valuable results from a human model system but also save time and reduce costs. |
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HealthTwiSt GmbH 
Functional Food