“We found that twin pregnancies conceived through IVF have a higher prevalence of CHD than singletons,” said Bahtiyar, who saw a three-fold increase. “IVF twins are usually fraternal, but past studies of identical twins also showed up to a 13-fold increase in congenital heart defects.”
Bahtiyar said that previous reports of increased CHD risk in pregnancies conceived via IVF may be due, in part, to a higher frequency of multiple pregnancies resulting from this form of conception. “The increased twinning seems to be the cause of the abnormality and not IVF per se.”
Bahtiyar and his team plan to increase the number of study subjects to replicate these preliminary results.
“The next step is to explore why this is happening,” he said. “Knowing about the risk of these defects will help increase the likelihood of survival after birth.”
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Other authors on the study included Antonette T. Dulay, Bevin P. Weeks, Alan H. Friedman and Joshua A. Copel.
A discussion on this topic will be available on Yale University iTunes U, “Health and Medicine” section. http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/yale.edu.1320598949 |
