New Study Finds Number of Multiple Births Affected by Congenital Anomalies has Doubled in the Last 30 Years
By BJOG,
BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
| 02. 06. 2013
The number of congenital anomalies, or birth defects, arising from multiple births has almost doubled since the 1980s, suggests a new study published in BJOG.
The study investigates how the change in the proportion of multiple births has affected the prevalence of congenital anomalies from multiple births, and the relative risk of congenital anomaly in multiple versus singleton births.
This study, led by the University of Ulster over a 24-year period (1984 – 2007) across 14 European countries using data from birth registries, recorded 5.4 million births. Data from the European Surveillance of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT) was also used which includes congenital anomaly cases among live births, fetal deaths from 20 weeks gestation and terminations of pregnancy in fetal anomaly.
Results showed that within the European population studied, there was approximately a 50% rise in the multiple birth rate from 1984 to 2007. Of the 5.4 million births during the study period, 3.0% of babies were from multiple births. Of the total number of major congenital anomaly cases (148,359), 3.83% were from multiple births.
The study found that the prevalence...
Related Articles
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
By Editorial Staff, The Lancet | 07.20.2024
Image by DrKontogianniIVF from Wikimedia Commons
Despite major advances in securing sexual and reproductive rights globally, one aspect is continually neglected: infertility. Evolving gender norms and financial precariousness have led to delayed childbearing, which increases infertility in both males and...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...