Thalidomide-Embryopathy in Twins — A collaborative study

Congenital limb reduction defects in twins

“…Although, in rare multiple cases such as VACTERL association, CLRDs may be part of a pattern of CAs related to both twinning and dysmorphogenesis. Nevertheless, twinning is not a major factor contributing to multiple CLRD cases and previous studies have shown similar conclusions [6,7,8,11,13,15,16,29,30,32,34,35].…”

“…The aetiology of many CLRD groups is still obscure. The data on twins with CLRD is scarce due to low incidence of CLRDs in multiple births and thus the number of pertinent studies is small [15,31]. The majority of papers have reported only on sporadic (concordant or discordant) monozygotic twins with CLRD [8,10,16,20,29,30,32] or on general studies of CAs including twins with CLRDs [2,7,11,13,17,19,22,27,34].…”

Discordant Findings in Extrahepatic Bile Duct Atresia in 6 Sets of Twins

“…As we already discussed EHBA can be created in a comparable manner; but an intestinal atresia is the result of impaired blood supply early in pregancy and EHBA is the product of a perinatal circulatory disturbance. 6. Biliary atresia as the result of a disorder in the bile duct epithelial membranous structure If the molecular lipid structure pattern of the epithelial membrane would be disarranged congenitaIly or acquired, probably ischaemically, this would result in a pathological vulnerablity of the membrane.…”

Identical but not the same: The value of discordant monozygotic twins in genetic research

“…MZ twins, both exposed to toxics may suggest variability of the effect that is probably not genetically determined, as published, for example, for diethylstilbestrol (DES), [Sandberg and Christian, 1980], thalidomide [Jorgensen et al, 1970], and alcohol [Streissguth and Dehaene, 1993] exposure.…”