Fascinating reason why Americans no longer have triplets

Over the past 30 years, the birth rate of triplets has more than halved, a new report shows.

The CDC reported Thursday that the rate of triplets and higher multiples fell from 193.5 per 100,000 births in 1998 to 73.8 per 100,000 births in 2023.

And the biggest declines were observed between 2009 and 2023.

Researchers have attributed the decline mainly to changes in fertility treatments and methods.

In the past, it was common for a fertility doctor to implant two or more fertilized embryos into a woman’s uterus after in vitro fertilization (IVF) to increase the chances of one developing and causing a pregnancy.

This led to more cases of twins, triplets and quadruplets between 1980 and 1998, as fertility treatments became more advanced, affordable and accessible. In the mid-1990s, 30 percent of all IVF pregnancies resulted in twins, triplets or higher order births.

Doctors were concerned about the number of twins and triplets born to people using IVF, because a pregnancy with more than one fetus is more likely to have complications than a pregnancy with one fetus.

This includes a greater chance of premature birth, miscarriage and conditions such as preeclampsia, in which blood pressure becomes dangerously high during pregnancy.

So starting in the early 2000s, doctors began issuing rules on the number of embryos that could be implanted during IVF, issuing new guidelines almost every two years until 2004, resulting in fewer multiple births.

In natural births, approximately one in 10,000 births is triplets. If we add triplets from IVF, the rate of triplets during pregnancy is approximately 7.38 per 10,000 births.

Dr. Amanda Williams, the chief medical officer of March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization focused on maternal health, said multiple pregnancies can be significantly more dangerous and jeopardize the health of the mother and fetus.

Overall, Dr. Williams said: told CNN‘This is good news for families, because triplets and higher order pregnancies are so much riskier for mother and baby.’

The latest recommendations from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommend implanting only one embryo at a time in a woman undergoing IVF under the age of 35, and no more than four embryos at a time in a woman undergoing IVF under the age of 40.

About 240,000 women annually undergo IVF, in which a woman’s egg is fertilized with sperm outside the body and then implanted into her uterus in the hope of producing a viable pregnancy.

The new CDC report uses data from the National Center for Health Statisticsa division of the CDC, and looks at births in the US since 1998.

The decline between 1998 and 2023 was greater in some demographic groups than others – which epidemiologists say may be because certain groups, such as white people, had access to IVF treatments earlier than others.

Among white women, the triplet and higher birth rate has fallen 71 percent since 1998. Among Hispanic women, the triplet and higher birth rate has fallen 25 percent since 1998.

It appears that the rate at which triplets are conceived naturally has not changed significantly, but because it is a rare event, the data is not out of line with IVF trends.

About one in 10,000 pregnancies is natural triplets Hillcrest Medical Center.