Some people who started life with a missing twin during pregnancy suffer from “missing twin syndrome”. A new test could make it possible to identify them, and therefore to treat them.
- Eight out of ten twins are born in Africa or Asia.
- The twinning rate has increased in thirty years, from 9.1 twin births per 1000 total births in the 1980s to 12 per 1000 in the 2010s.
It is quite common that, during a twin pregnancy, one of two embryos disappears prematurely. Discovery of an epigenetic modification specific to identical twins could make it possible to know if you have been in this situation thanks to a simple test.
A fairly common phenomenon
Growing up in utero with a now missing twin is quite common. “Up to 12% of human pregnancies may begin as multiple pregnancies, but less than 2% of these are carried to term. detail the scientists in the preamble.
To identify the pregnancies concerned, Jenny van Dongen’s team (University of Amsterdam; Netherlands) scanned more than 6,000 genomes from identical twins, fraternal twins or parents of twins, with the aim of finding a ” unique “signature” of the twinning. Conclusion: they identified 834 DNA sequences whose epigenetic profile is different in identical twins compared to single births.
A molecular signature for life
“Because identical twins retain a lifelong molecular signature, we can retrospectively diagnose whether a person was conceived as a monozygotic twin,” welcome the researchers.
Detecting people who started their life alongside a twin is interesting, because it is a stage of life often killed by parents. Some people thus suffer all their life without knowing it from the “missing twin syndrome”, which can cause physical and mental problems.
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