MySQL Reference Manual

Queries from Twin Project

At Analytikerna and Lentus, we have been doing the systems and field work for a big research project. This project is a collaboration between the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet Stockholm and the Section on Clinical Research in Aging and Psychology at the University of Southern California.

The project involves a screening part where all twins in Sweden older than 65 years are interviewed by telephone. Twins who meet certain criteria are passed on to the next stage. In this latter stage, twins who want to participate are visited by a doctor/nurse team. Some of the examinations include physical and neuropsychological examination, laboratory testing, neuroimaging, psychological status assessment, and family history collection. In addition, data is collected on medical and environmental risk factors.

More information about the Twin studies can be found at: http://www.imm.ki.se/TWIN/TWINUKW.HTM.

The latter part of the project is administered with a web interface written using Perl and MySQL.

Each night all data from the interviews is moved into a MySQL database.

Find All Non-Distributed Twins

The following query is used to determine who goes into the second part of the project:

SELECT
        CONCAT(p1.id, p1.tvab) + 0 AS tvid,
        CONCAT(p1.christian_name, " ", p1.surname) AS Name,
        p1.postal_code AS Code,
        p1.city AS City,
        pg.abrev AS Area,
        IF(td.participation = "Aborted", "A", " ") AS A,
        p1.dead AS dead1,
        l.event AS event1,
        td.suspect AS tsuspect1,
        id.suspect AS isuspect1,
        td.severe AS tsevere1,
        id.severe AS isevere1,
        p2.dead AS dead2,
        l2.event AS event2,
        h2.nurse AS nurse2,
        h2.doctor AS doctor2,
        td2.suspect AS tsuspect2,
        id2.suspect AS isuspect2,
        td2.severe AS tsevere2,
        id2.severe AS isevere2,
        l.finish_date
FROM
        twin_project AS tp
        /* For Twin 1 */
        LEFT JOIN twin_data AS td ON tp.id = td.id
                  AND tp.tvab = td.tvab
        LEFT JOIN informant_data AS id ON tp.id = id.id
                  AND tp.tvab = id.tvab
        LEFT JOIN harmony AS h ON tp.id = h.id
                  AND tp.tvab = h.tvab
        LEFT JOIN lentus AS l ON tp.id = l.id
                  AND tp.tvab = l.tvab
        /* For Twin 2 */
        LEFT JOIN twin_data AS td2 ON p2.id = td2.id
                  AND p2.tvab = td2.tvab
        LEFT JOIN informant_data AS id2 ON p2.id = id2.id
                  AND p2.tvab = id2.tvab
        LEFT JOIN harmony AS h2 ON p2.id = h2.id
                  AND p2.tvab = h2.tvab
        LEFT JOIN lentus AS l2 ON p2.id = l2.id
                  AND p2.tvab = l2.tvab,
        person_data AS p1,
        person_data AS p2,
        postal_groups AS pg
WHERE
        /* p1 gets main twin and p2 gets his/her twin. */
        /* ptvab is a field inverted from tvab */
        p1.id = tp.id AND p1.tvab = tp.tvab AND
        p2.id = p1.id AND p2.ptvab = p1.tvab AND
        /* Just the sceening survey */
        tp.survey_no = 5 AND
        /* Skip if partner died before 65 but allow emigration (dead=9) */
        (p2.dead = 0 OR p2.dead = 9 OR
         (p2.dead = 1 AND
          (p2.death_date = 0 OR
           (((TO_DAYS(p2.death_date) - TO_DAYS(p2.birthday)) / 365)
            >= 65))))
        AND
        (
        /* Twin is suspect */
        (td.future_contact = 'Yes' AND td.suspect = 2) OR
        /* Twin is suspect - Informant is Blessed */
        (td.future_contact = 'Yes' AND td.suspect = 1
                                   AND id.suspect = 1) OR
        /* No twin - Informant is Blessed */
        (ISNULL(td.suspect) AND id.suspect = 1
                            AND id.future_contact = 'Yes') OR
        /* Twin broken off - Informant is Blessed */
        (td.participation = 'Aborted'
         AND id.suspect = 1 AND id.future_contact = 'Yes') OR
        /* Twin broken off - No inform - Have partner */
        (td.participation = 'Aborted' AND ISNULL(id.suspect)
                                      AND p2.dead = 0))
        AND
        l.event = 'Finished'
        /* Get at area code */
        AND SUBSTRING(p1.postal_code, 1, 2) = pg.code
        /* Not already distributed */
        AND (h.nurse IS NULL OR h.nurse=00 OR h.doctor=00)
        /* Has not refused or been aborted */
        AND NOT (h.status = 'Refused' OR h.status = 'Aborted'
        OR h.status = 'Died' OR h.status = 'Other')
ORDER BY
        tvid;

Some explanations:

CONCAT(p1.id, p1.tvab) + 0 AS tvid

We want to sort on the concatenated id and tvab in numerical order. Adding 0 to the result causes MySQL to treat the result as a number.

column id

This identifies a pair of twins. It is a key in all tables.

column tvab

This identifies a twin in a pair. It has a value of 1 or 2.

column ptvab

This is an inverse of tvab. When tvab is 1 this is 2, and vice versa. It exists to save typing and to make it easier for MySQL to optimise the query.

This query demonstrates, among other things, how to do lookups on a table from the same table with a join (p1 and p2). In the example, this is used to check whether a twin’s partner died before the age of 65. If so, the row is not returned.

All of the preceding information exists in all tables with twin-related information. We have a key on both id,tvab (all tables) and id,ptvab (person_data) to make queries faster.

On our production machine (a 200MHz UltraSPARC), this query returns about 150-200 rows and takes less than 1 second.

The current number of records in the tables used in this example:

Table	Rows
person_data	71074
lentus	5291
twin_project	5286
twin_data	2012
informant_data	663
harmony	381
postal_groups	100

Show a Table on Twin Pair Status

Each interview ends with a status code called event. The following query is used to display a table over all twin pairs combined by event. This indicates in how many pairs both twins are finished, in how many pairs one twin is finished and the other refused, and so on.

SELECT
        t1.event,
        t2.event,
        COUNT(*)
FROM
        lentus AS t1,
        lentus AS t2,
        twin_project AS tp
WHERE
        /* We are looking at one pair at a time */
        t1.id = tp.id
        AND t1.tvab=tp.tvab
        AND t1.id = t2.id
        /* Just the sceening survey */
        AND tp.survey_no = 5
        /* This makes each pair only appear once */
        AND t1.tvab='1' AND t2.tvab='2'
GROUP BY
        t1.event, t2.event;