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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
First of all the Authors stress the importance of twin studies as a method of analysis of the pathological phenomena from a hereditary standpoint: to this aim, the Interzygotic Twin Method may be used in statistical studies, and the Clinical Twin Method in clinical ones. On this basis, the Authors report their observations, on a remarkable number of male twin pairs, affected by anomalies or syndromes including one or more genital dysfunctions, either in infancy or adolescence. Numerous cases of phimosis are thus presented, where the higher concordance in pairs of MZ twins stands for a hereditary conditioning; cases of hypospadias, showing a perfect symmetry of the malformation in the cotwins; cryptorchism, with various possibilities of presentation of the anomaly in the intrageminal comparison. The Authors also describe in detail, making an analytical intra-pair comparison of the symptoms and laboratory data, some cases of complex adiposogenital dystrophy, as well as one case of Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome with different clinical manifestation in a DZ pair. The longitudinal study carried out over many years on some of the pairs affected by the above mentioned clinical pictures, and the clinico-statistical analysis of the cases under consideration allow the Authors to draw a number of positive conclusions concerning the variable, genotypic conditioning of the sex anomalies considered: in this field, as well as in many others of nosography, the Clinical Twin Method appears to be highly useful in practice, and unique by reason of its peculiarity.
Lecture read at the Symposium on « Sex Pathology in Childhood » held at Perugia (Italy) on May 9-11, 1964.