One in every 42 babies is a twin. There are more than 1.6 million births of twins a year. There had never been so many in the last forty years and perhaps forever. It is the result of the increasing use of medically assisted reproduction techniques, such as fertilization in vitro, ovarian stimulation and artificial insemination, but also of the increasingly advanced age of mothers. The data were collected in more than 100 countries and processed between the University of Oxford, the French Institute of Demographic Studies and the Dutch University of Radboud.
The results were published in the journal Human Reproduction.
There is no shortage of famous cases. Roger Federer he is the father of two pairs of twins. Jennifer Lopez’s children and the little ones are twins Brad Pitt e Angelina Jolie like the princes of Monaco and the children of George and Amal Clooney (the images are in the gallery above). They have twins Lorella Cuccarini and Heather Parisi, but also Andrea Pirlo, Juventus coach, and his player Alvaro Morata.
The research examined births in the 2010-2015 period in 165 countries and compared with those in the 1980-1985 period recorded in 112 countries. The twin birth rate increased by a third. There were 9 in every thousand and now they are 12.
The cases are all over the world, but 80% of twin births take place between America and Africa where they are mostly born dizygotic twins that is, by fertilization of two oocytes by two different spermatozoa. It is precisely the non-monozygotic twins that have increased the number of twin births. Monozygotic twins are born in four births in every thousand.
“The sheer number of twin births has increased everywhere except in South America,” explains Gilles Pison, INED demographer. «In North America and in Africa the numbers have grown by over 80% and in Africa this increase is caused by population growth ”. Studying twin births is especially important for poorer countries. The sociologist Christiaan Monden of the University of Oxford recalls the association “with a higher mortality rate among infants and children and with higher complications for mothers and children during pregnancy, childbirth and in the subsequent period”. In sub-Saharan Africa, one of the twins is in danger of dying in the first year of life.
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