IVF twins 'sicker in early life'
By BBC,
BBC News
| 05. 20. 2009
A study found these babies were far more likely to be admitted to neonatal intensive care and to be hospitalised in their first three years of life.
Other work in the same journal, Human Reproduction, provides reassurance on the outcomes of children born after embryos are frozen and stored, however.
A quarter of fertility treatment babies are now born after freezing.
Evidence from 21 controlled studies showed embryos that had been frozen shortly after they started to divide had a better, or at least as good, outcome in terms of premature birth and birth weight as children born from fresh cycles of IVF or another common assisted reproductive technique called ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).
The same cannot be said for twins born after assisted reproductive therapy (ART) when compared with naturally conceived twins.
It is known already that ART twins are at higher risk of problems such as low birth weight and premature delivery than singletons around the time of their birth, but, to a large extent, these risks exist as part of the problems associated with multiple births in...
Related Articles
By Katherine Long, Ben Foldy, and Lingling Wei, The Wall Street Journal | 12.13.2025
Inside a closed Los Angeles courtroom, something wasn’t right.
Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental...
By Sarah A. Topol, The New York Times Magazine | 12.14.2025
The women in House 3 rarely had a chance to speak to the women in House 5, but when they did, the things they heard scared them. They didn’t actually know where House 5 was, only that it was huge...
By Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 12.10.2025
Micah Nerio had known since his early 30s that he wanted to be a father, even if he did not have a partner. He spent a decade saving up to pursue surrogacy, an expensive process where he would create embryos...
By Carter Sherman, The Guardian | 12.08.2025
A huge defense policy bill, revealed by US lawmakers on Sunday, does not include a provision that would have provided broad healthcare coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) for active-duty members of the military, despite Donald Trump’s pledge...
