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PROVO, Utah (AP) -- In Utah, as in the rest of the nation, the percentage of pregnancies resulting in twins is increasing. But Utah is running behind the national average.
A study by Dr. Louis Keith, an emeritus professor at Northwestern University's medical school, found that one in 30 births nationwide is a twin, while the rate was one in 60 in 1970s.
In Utah, with its young parents, the figure is one in 38, compared to one in about 46 in 1989.
Dr. Julie Gainer, a perinatologist at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, said the twin rate is going up due to increased use of fertility treatments and women delaying childbirth.
The most common treatment for infertility is using drugs to stimulate ovulation, which result in a 5 to 8 percent incidence of multiple pregnancies, said Dr. C. Matthew Peterson, a gynecologist at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center.
The drugs cause more than one egg to be released at once. Treatments such as in vitro fertilization, in which fertilized eggs are planted in the mother's uterus, increases the likelihood of a plural pregnancy because often more than one egg is implanted to increase the likelihood of any pregnancy at all.
"In our program the majority receive only two embryos, but this still results in about a 50 percent or greater multiple pregnancy rate," he said.
The treatments have become more common. Couples now often seek treatment after two or three months of trying to get pregnant, down from a year, and more people are aware of the options.
Older women are both naturally more likely to give birth to twins and more likely to take advantage of treatment for infertility, Gainer said.
With the trend leaning toward career early in life and family later, seeing women becoming pregnant in their 40s isn't a rarity, thus upping the numbers again on twins.
That explains in part why twin births in Utah -- and Utah County in particular -- are not increasing at the same rate as the nation as a whole.
The percentage of twin births in Utah has been increasing at four times the rate it has in Utah County.
"In this population, with the young age, they seem to have fewer problems," Gainer said.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
