Jooheon Sung

"Healthy Twin" is a twin family study extension of the existing Korean Twin-Family Register. Healthy Twin recruits adult like-sex twins over the age of 30 and their adult family members. Healthy Twin protocols are primarily tailored to the study of the quantitative trait loci of complex traits as well as to the role of environment in the etiology of complex diseases. A full-length survey is underway, including questionnaires, health examinations and the collection of biological specimens. So far

Abstract ‘Healthy Twin’ is a twin family study extension of the existing Korean Twin-Family Register. Healthy Twin recruits adult like-sex twins over the age of 30 and their adult family members. Healthy Twin protocols are primarily tailored to the study of the quantitative trait loci of complex traits as well as to the role of environment in the etiology of complex diseases. A full-length survey is underway, including questionnaires, health examinations and the collection of biological specimen

To evaluate the association between height and risk of cancer in an East Asian, middle-income population, the authors followed up a cohort of 788,789 Koreans (449,214 men and 339,575 women) aged 40-64 years for cancer incidence between 1994 and 2003. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to evaluate the association. Each 5-cm increment in height was associated with 5% and 7% higher risk of all-sites cancer in men and women, respectively, after adjustment for age, body mass index,

No consensus exists as to the most sensitive and specific obesity indicator associated with metabolic risk factors. We aimed to validate anthropometry as the predictor for obesity-related metabolic risk factors through comparison with direct body composition measures in Korean adults. A total of 995 Korean women and 577 Korean men who participated in the Healthy Twin study were the subjects. Anthropometric measurements included BMI, waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and waist-t

The relation between body mass index (kg/m2) and noncoronary mortality is not well established. To study this relation, a population with low coronary mortality may be especially useful. We conducted a 12-year follow-up study of 235,398 Korean men 40-64 years of age. Study subjects had undergone health examinations in 1986 (baseline) and 1990. We excluded subjects with substantial weight loss during this period. There were 13,387 deaths, including 600 deaths from coronary events, between 1990 an

The heritability of eating behavior and body weight-related traits in Asian populations has not been reported. The purpose of this study was to estimate the heritability of eating behavior and the body weight-related traits of current weight and self-reported past weight among twins and their families. Study subjects were 2,144 Korean, adult, same-sex twins and their families at the ages between 20 and 65 years (443 monozygotic (MZ) and 124 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, and 1,010 individuals of the

BACKGROUND: Although diabetes is a well-known risk factor of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, the cardiovascular disease risk of glycemia below the current diabetic threshold remains uncertain. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 652,901 Korean men aged 30 to 64 years from the Korean National Health Insurance System were categorized into 8 groups by fasting blood glucose (FBG) level at baseline and were followed up for cardiovascular diseases occurrence during 1992-2001. Over the follow-up p

This study reveals an intimate association of the human skin microbiome and host genes, and increases our understanding of the role of human genetic factors in establishing a microbial ecosystem on the body surface.

Determining valid zygosity is a basic and important requirement in a twin study, because misdiagnosing zygosity leads to biased results. The Healthy Twin Study has collected data from adult like-sex twins and their families since 2005. In the study, a questionnaire to determine zygosity was developed comprising four questions; one concerning the degree of resemblance, and three concerning the degree of confusion by the resemblance. Among 2,761 individuals (624 twin pairs) of twin and their famil

CONTEXT: There is a growing body of evidence that epigenetic changes including DNA methylation influence the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and its microvascular complications. OBJECTIVE: We conducted a methylome-wide association study (MWAS) to identify differentially methylated sites (DMSs) of T2D and diabetic kidney disease (DKD) in a Korean population. METHODS: We performed an MWAS in 232 participants with T2D and 197 nondiabetic controls with the Illumina EPIC bead chip using peripheral bloo

Significant genetic contributions for MetS, its related phenotypes, and latent factors comprising MetS are confirmed.

ABSTRACT Epidemiologic studies have replicated positive associations between obesity and bone health, but their mechanisms are still debatable. We aimed to scrutinize an association between bone health and obesity using genetic instrumental variables (IVs) with the distinction of general versus abdominal obesity. We selected independent IVs of body mass index (BMI) and BMI-adjusted waist circumference (aWC, a proxy of a central fat distribution) by combining novel genomewide searches from the Ko

The Healthy Twin Study, Korea (HT) is an ongoing multi-center cohort study that was initiated in 2005, based on a nation-wide twin and family database. Since its inception, the HT has recruited 815 pairs of adult twins and a total of 3,690 individual twins and their families as of July 2012. Here we summarize updates since the previous report in 2006. Besides the increase in size, the HT has been enriched in several aspects: a biobank was constructed for ongoing and future omics studies; and gen

"BRCAX" refers breast cancers occurring in women with a family history predictive of being a BRCA1/2 mutation carrier, but BRCA1/2 genetic screening has failed to find causal mutations. In this study, we report the findings of the genetic architecture of BRCAX with novel and redefined candidate loci and their potential impacts on preventive strategy. We performed a genome-wide association study involving 1,469 BRCAX cases from the Korean Hereditary Breast Cancer study, and high-risk breast cance