The statistics are clear: there are more and more twins in the world. Thus, approximately 1.6 million pairs of twins are born each year on the planet, mainly in Asia and Africa. Almost 1 in 40 babies are born to a twin pregnancy.
Twin pregnancies are on the increase: in the 1980s, 9.1 out of every 1000 births gave birth to twins. Today there are about 12 twin births per 1,000.
In detail, it is the dizygotic twinning rate (the “fraternal twins” who are not necessarily of the same sex) which has skyrocketed, since the monozygous twinning rate (the “identical twins” who have the same heritage genetics) has not changed – it is still 4 pregnancies per 1000.
Medically Assisted Reproduction (ART) Increases The Risk Of Twin Pregnancy
How to explain this “boom of the twins”? According to a recent study carried out by researchers from the National Museum of Natural History, the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), the University of Oxford (in the United Kingdom) and the Radboud University (in Netherlands), this “unprecedented rise“could result from two factors: the spread of medically assisted procreation (AMP), which is associated with a high risk of multiple births, and late childbearing since the probability of a twin pregnancy increases with age. wife.
Good news ? Not sure. Because the researchers, who published their work in the specialized journal Human Reproduction, notice that “this boom in twins poses a public health problem because they are fragile children who require more care and who have a higher mortality than others“. Thus, specialists estimate that 80% of twins are born prematurely and 40% are born very prematurely.
Read also :
- A very rare case of semi-identical twins
- In Vietnam, twins born to different fathers
- In hospital for a stomach ache, she finds herself 34 weeks pregnant
