OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the perinatal outcome of twin pregnancies delivered in a tertiary teaching hospital according to chorionicity. METHODS A retrospective study involving 289 twin pregnancies delivered from January 2003 to December 2006 was carried out. Maternal and perinatal data were obtained from hospital charts and delivery logs. Chorionicity was determined by ultrasono...

OBJECTIVE Over half of twin pregnancies in US and UK deliver prematurely but the reasons for this are unclear. The contractility of myometrium from twin pregnancies has not been directly investigated. The objective of this research was to determine if there are differences in the contractile activity and response to oxytocin, between myometrium from singleton and twin pregnancies, across a rang...

OBJECTIVE To determine the magnitude of the growth retardation in Dutch monozygotic and dizygotic twins during infancy in comparison with the Dutch reference growth charts for general population infants from 1997 and to construct reference growth charts for twins. DESIGN Descriptive. METHOD The growth of twins was studied using longitudinal data on over 4000 Dutch twin pairs from birth unti...

The single stillbirth long-term intrauterine retention in dichorionic twin pregnancy is rarely reported. Also, the birth of a fetus is followed in most cases by immediate expulsion of the second twin. We hereby present an unusual case of asynchronous delivery of dichorionic twins, associating discordance for major and minor anomaly. The intrauterine death of the twin A, presenting a large sacro...

OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to analyse placental hormone profiles in twin pregnancies to determine if they could be used to predict preterm birth. STUDY DESIGN Progesterone, estradiol, estriol and corticotropin-releasing hormone were measured using competitive immunoassay and radioimmunoassay in serum and saliva samples of 98 women with twin pregnancies,at 3 or more gestational t...

Pregnancy outcome and characteristics of women who conceive following subfertility treatment remains a subject of great interest. We analyzed these variables among 199 women who delivered a registerable twin birth compared with 1773 women who delivered a naturally conceived twin birth in a population-based obstetric cohort drawn from around Oxford, England. Treatment was restricted to conceptio...

Twin studies are important to investigate genetic influences on variation in human brain morphology in health and disease. However, the twin method has been criticized for its alleged non-generalizability due to differences in the intrauterine and family environment of twins, compared with singletons. To test whether twin-singleton differences complicate interpretation of genetic contributions ...

OBJECTIVES To examine the long term effects of low birth weight on academic achievements in twins and singletons and to determine whether the academic achievement of twins in early adulthood is inferior to that of singletons. DESIGN Cohort study. SETTING Taiwanese nationwide register of academic outcome. PARTICIPANTS A cohort of 218 972 singletons and 1687 twins born in Taiwan, 1983-5. ...

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of twin-to-twin delivery interval on umbilical artery acid-base status of the second twin at birth. This was a retrospective cohort study of all live-born twins with measured acid-base status in umbilical arterial blood who were delivered after 34 weeks' gestation from June 2003 to February 2006. Twins with any maternal or fetal complication...

Low birth weight has been associated with reduced hand grip strength, which is a marker of future physical function and disease risk. The aim of this study was to apply a twin pair approach, using both 'individual' data and 'within-pair' differences, to investigate the influence of birth weight on hand grip strength and whether this association may be mediated through fat free mass (FFM). Parti...