A drive to lower the incidence of multiple births in fertility treatments

Darkfrog submitted, created time 10 months 2 weeks (www.nytimes.com)

Doctors employing in vitro fertilization tend to implant several healthy embryos in the hopes that at least one will end up as a full-term healthy baby. However, this technique often leads to multiple births. Women carrying three or more children have a dramatically increased risk of health problems, premature birth and miscarriage, to the point where doctors often recommend "reducing," or selectively aborting one of the fetuses once it becomes apparent that triplets or more are on the way

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Procedure predicts embryos most likely to result in pregnancy

BIOBOSS submitted, created time 1 year 9 months (www.eurekalert.org)

To address the high rate of multiple births resulting from in-vitro-fertilization (IVF), researchers at Yale School of Medicine and McGill University have developed a procedure that estimates the reproductive potential of individual embryos, possibly leading to a decrease in multiple-infant births and a higher success rate in women undergoing IVF.

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