BACKGROUND A significant increase in the frequency of twins has been described in the literature as a secondary effect of perinatal supplementation with folic acid. AIM To verify if the frequency of twins increased in a Chilean hospital, after the start of flour folic acid supplementation. MATERIAL AND METHODS The frequency of twins was compared in the University of Chile Clinical Hospital,...

Parasitic twins, a specific type of conjoined twins [6], occur when one twin ceases development during gestation [7] and becomes vestigial to the fully formed dominant twin, called the autositic twin. The underdeveloped twin is called parasitic because it is only partially formed, is not functional, or is wholly dependent on the autositic twin. In most cases, the phenotype of parasitic twins is...

Twins reared apart provide a fascinating experiment to distinguish genetic from environmental influences. However, there is as yet no broad report on distribution of twins reared apart, especially in the Chinese population. In this study, information on 18,295 volunteer twin pairs of all age groups was compiled in nine provinces or cities of China, and questionnaires were used for zygosity dete...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to develop birth weight references for twins. Mean birth weights of individual twins are lower than those of singletons, hence singleton birth weight curves may not be suitable to assess twin birth weights. STUDY DESIGN Twin birth weight curves were developed according to gestational age, gender, parity and mode of -conception. The curves are based on popul...

The aim of this study was to establish the contribution of genetic factors to the variance of plasma insulin concentration in healthy, normotensive twins. Seventeen pairs of monozygotic (MZ) and 17 pairs of dizygotic (DZ) twins were investigated. The test of genetic variance revealed a significantly larger within-pair variance of fasting plasma insulin (FPI) and a relative insulin resistance (R...

Epigastric heteropagus refers to unequal and asymmetric conjoined twins in which the dependent component (parasite) is smaller and usually attached to the epigastrium of the dominant component (autosite). Epigastric heteropagus is a very rare type of conjoined twins. It is generally assumed that conjoined twins represent a form of monozygotic twinning, but there has been no confirmation of this...

64/105 subjects who have a twin with multiple sclerosis included in a study of clinical concordance also underwent MRI of the brain. 8/23 monozygotic and 1/41 dizygotic co-twins from this subgroup were clinically concordant of whom 8/9 had MRI appearances typical of multiple sclerosis. Of the 48 clinically discordant twins aged less than 60, abnormalities on MRI were detected in 6/15 (40%) mono...

Parasitic twins, a specific type of conjoined twins [6], occur when one twin ceases development during gestation [7] and becomes vestigial to the fully formed dominant twin, called the autositic twin. The underdeveloped twin is called parasitic because it is only partially formed, is not functional, or is wholly dependent on the autositic twin. In most cases, the phenotype of parasitic twins is...

Face recognition is one of the most challenging problems in the domain of image processing and machine vision. The face recognition system is critical when individuals have very similar biometric signature such as identical twins. In this paper, new efficient facial-based identical twins recognition is proposed according to geometric moment. The utilized geometric moment is Zernike Moment (ZM) ...

We examine interactive effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on heritable variation in age at first consensual sexual intercourse in a young cohort of 3,350 female and 2,724 male Australian twins. Consistent with hypotheses, genetic influences explained little if any variation in age at first consensual sexual intercourse for female twins reporting CSA (CSA(+)), with shared environment explai...