Children born with non-optimal birth characteristics - that is, are small for gestational age and/or preterm - have an increased risk for several long-term effects such as neurological sequelae and chronic disease. The purpose of this study was to examine whether twins exhibited a different outcome, compared with singletons, in terms of hospitalization during adolescence and early adulthood, an...

OBJECTIVE Twins in Africa may be at increased risk of metabolic disorders due to strained conditions in utero, including high exposure to infections. We studied metabolic syndrome (MS) and diabetes mellitus (DM) among young twins and singletons in Guinea-Bissau. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The study was cross-sectional and occurred from October 2009 until August 2011 at the Bandim Health Proj...

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. ...

Twins have an increased risk of being small-for-gestational-age (SGA) at birth compared to singletons, but little is known about their growth in childhood. It’s hypothesized that the maternal-fetal unit may become less capable sustaining optimal twin fetuses starting around 32 weeks indicating some smaller size be due adaptation. Whether SGA twins show same postnatal patterns as singletons born...

OBJECTIVES AND STUDY DESIGN The aim of this study was two-fold: to investigate the association of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and small newborn size, using standardized measures; and to examine within strata of fresh and cryopreserved embryos transfer, whether this association is influenced by parental infertility diagnoses. We used a population-based retrospective cohort from Michig...

BACKGROUND IVF children, including singletons, are known to have a poorer obstetric outcome than children born after spontaneous conception. With a broad introduction of single embryo transfer (SET), this scenario might change. This study compares the obstetric outcome after IVF with SET, elective SET (eSET), non elective SET (non-eSET) and double embryo transfer (DET) with outcomes in the gene...

This study was performed using population-based data to analyze whether motor development in early life is different between singletons and twins in Japan. For better comparison and investigation, we divided the 2 groups into a group with a birthweight of 2.5 kg or greater (subgroup A) and a group with a birthweight of less than 2.5 kg (subgroup B), respectively. We analyzed the database of med...

Multiple births in Korea have been increased recently as a consequence of increased infertility due to advancing maternal age at first birth, and increased use of assisted reproductive technology. Multiples suffer higher mortality and morbidity than singletons. However, it is not clear whether preterm multiple very low birth weight infants (VLBWI) suffer higher mortality and morbidity than comp...