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June 8, 2007

Strange But True!

Q. “Vanishing Twin Syndrome” (VTS) refers to a) the tendency for twins to move apart and lose contact b) one twin dying long before the other c) poor birth records showing far fewer twins born than actually are d) many embryonic twins disappearing long before being born, often without leaving a trace.

A. Amazingly d), with as many as one in eight pregnancies beginning as twin conceptions though only one in every 80 live births results in twins, says Scott Forbes in “A Natural History of Families.” Most twin gestations undergo “brood reduction,” which occurs early and out of sight, before the embryos technically become fetuses at eight weeks. Some but not all vanishing twins can be detected with ultrasound, and in fact, it wasn't until the use of early sonagrams in the 1980s that the scope of VTS became apparent.


 
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