Twins News and Research

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Assisted reproduction rates rise and multiple births decline: Australian report

Latest reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that the number of Australian and New Zealand women giving birth to twins after becoming pregnant with the help of assisted reproductive technology has reduced and may continue its declining trend.

8 Nov 2011

Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital surgeons successfully separate conjoined twins

Formerly conjoined twins Angelica and Angelina Sabuco have been successfully separated, physicians at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital announced late this afternoon.

2 Nov 2011

One embryo is all it takes for a successful IVF: Study

Doctors practicing IVF often transferred multiple embryos to a woman’s body at once, in the hope that at least one of them would lead to a successful pregnancy. That changes now as a new study from researchers at the University of Iowa in Iowa City found that women who had only one embryo transferred during IVF didn’t have lower chances of getting pregnant, but they did have a lower risk of giving birth to twins than women who had multiple embryos transferred.

25 Oct 2011

Study explores how internet message boards help women after pregnancy loss

Nearly one in six pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth, but parents' losses are frequently minimized or not acknowledged by friends, family or the community.

20 Oct 2011

UCSF scientists identify how normal cells transform into brain tumors

Brain tumor specimens taken from neurosurgery cases at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center has given scientists a new window on the transformation that occurs as healthy brain cells begin to form tumors.

29 Sep 2011

Salk Institute professor named 2011 recipient of NIH Director's T-R01 program

Dr. Fred Gage, a professor in the Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics and holder of the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases, has been named a 2011 recipient of the prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's Transformative Research Projects (T-R01) program.

29 Sep 2011

No link between chemotherapy during pregnancy and children's cognitive development

Children born after their mothers were treated with chemotherapy during pregnancy appear to be unaffected by the experience in terms of the development of their mental processes and the normal functioning of their hearts, according to new research presented at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress.

27 Sep 2011

Moderate alcohol intake can reduce risk of asthma

Drinking alcohol in moderate quantities can reduce the risk of asthma, according to Danish researchers.

26 Sep 2011

Hair loss, divorce and smoking in women – links established

A new study showed that genetics aside, the next strongest predictor of midline (central) hair loss among women is their marital status, with the loss of a spouse (through either divorce or death) raising the risk for thinning hair above that of married or single women.

26 Sep 2011

Woman with two wombs gives birth to miracle twins

A Florida woman with a rare medical condition has delivered twins -- one from each of her two uteruses. The 24-year-old mother, Andreea Barbosa and her husband, Miguel, conceived the twins without reproductive medicine. Nathan and Natalie Barbosa were born Sept. 15 at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater. They join 2-year-old sister, Izabella.

21 Sep 2011

Successful separation of twin girls joined at the head

British surgeons have successfully separated conjoined twin baby girls in a complex and extremely rare operation. Sudan-born Rital and Ritag Gaboura are craniopagus twins, meaning they were born joined at the head.

19 Sep 2011

Researcher identifies genetic mutation responsible for adermatoglyphia

Like DNA, fingerprints are unique to each person or set of identical twins. That makes them a valuable identification tool for everything from crime detection to international travel. But what happens when the tips of our fingers are missing those distinctive patterns of ridges?

19 Sep 2011

Memphis operation successfully separates twins joined at the spine

Joshua and Jacob Spates, all of seven months old spent their initial months outside the womb as conjoined twins. Now they are recovering in the pediatric intensive care unit of a Memphis hospital after a successful 13-hour surgery to separate them.

15 Sep 2011

Major difference in twin birth weights linked to increased risk of health complications

The first results of a major all-Ireland study of twin pregnancies, led by Perinatal Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and funded by the Health Research Board, has shown that a major difference in the birth weights among a pair of twin babies results in an increased risk of health complications for both twins.

6 Sep 2011

Amgen to present data from several Prolia studies at ASBMR 2011 meeting

Amgen today announced that it will present data from several Prolia (denosumab) studies, including eight year efficacy and safety data from a Phase 2 extension study in women with postmenopausal osteoporosis with low bone mineral density (BMD), at the 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif. from Sept. 16-20, 2011.

19 Aug 2011

Novel therapy reduces elevated blood levels of toxic protein in women with preeclampsia

A novel therapy that reduces elevated blood levels of a potentially toxic protein in women with preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy, may someday address the therapeutic dilemma posed by the condition - balancing life-threatening risks to the mother with the dangers that early delivery poses to an immature fetus.

3 Aug 2011

Dilemma of single vs. double embryo transfers

Elsevier announced the publication of several commentaries in the scientific journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online on the subject of how many embryos it is safe and proper to place in a uterus, and how best to regulate this decision. It is a dilemma faced by all patients anxiously caught between no pregnancies at all or facing the prospect of twins or triplets. In this difficult place it is often all too easy to think that the latter option must be the best. But is it?

28 Jul 2011

C-sections on the rise: One in three mothers opting for procedure

According to the latest study reports, one in three births in the U.S. are now delivered by Caesarean section, which is an all time high and an increasd of 25 percent over seven years.

24 Jul 2011

Researchers discover how genetic mutations cause rare human diseases

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and in Michigan, North Carolina and Spain have discovered how genetic mutations cause a number of rare human diseases, which include Meckel syndrome, Joubert syndrome and several other disorders.

11 Jul 2011

Overall risk of stillbirth low among ART children

The group looked at 60,650 singletons in a common Nordic database from ART registers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and compared these to a control group of 360,022 naturally conceived (NC) singletons. In both groups 0.4 % of singletons were stillborn, with a definition of stillbirth as a dead child after 22 weeks of gestation.

6 Jul 2011