Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/290262
M ORE THAN A third of twin births and three-quarters of births of triplets or greater multiples in the United States can be attributed to fertility treatments, accord- ing to recent figures published in The New England Journal of Medicine. By comparing data on multiple births from 1962 to 1966, prior to the availability of fertility treatments, with data from 1971 to 2011, Eli Y. Adashi, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Brown University, and his colleagues found that 36 percent of twins and 77 percent of triplets and higher-order births by 2011 resulted from fertility treatment-assisted conception. Since 1998, when physicians were discouraged from implanting three or more embryos, there has been a 29 percent decrease in triplet and higher-order births. That reduction occurred in the same period during which transfer of three or more embryos during in vitro fertilization (IVF) decreased 70 percent and triplet and higher-order births related to IVF fell 33 percent. In the same period, however, non-IVF procedures resulted in an increasing percentage of those births — rising from 36 percent to 45 percent. ■ — Caitlin Foster High Proportion of Multiple Births Linked to Fertility Treatments + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + THAT'SNEWS