Laura Bell
Progress Educational Trust
31 October 2006
 [BioNews, London]
Female twins are up to five times more likely to be affected by premature ovarian failure (early menopause) than other women, say US scientists. The research, published online last week in the journal Human Reproduction, studied more than 800 twin pairs of women born in the UK and Australia.
Premature ovarian failure, in which the menopause occurs before the age of 40, affects around one per cent of women. However, this figure rose to five per cent for the twins in the study. And by the age of 45, more than 15 per cent of twins had gone through the menopause, compared to five per cent of the general population.
Since the rate of premature menopause was similar in both identical and non-identical twins, the scientists think that the risk is not simply down to genes. It could be that sharing a womb leads to changes in the way genes are switched on and off during development. In identical twins, it is possible that the way the embryo splits during the twinning process could leave one twin with more 'egg-forming' tissue than the other. 'Our preferred hypothesis is an epigenetic one; that is not the genes themselves, but changes in the chemical groups that are stuck on to DNA and control genes by switching them on and off', said team leader Roger Gosden, of Cornell University in New York.
The study began following the case of Stephanie Yarber, an American woman who underwent the menopause when she was 13. She gave birth after receiving an ovary transplant at the age of 25 from her identical twin sister, who had normal fertility. The team that treated Ms Yarber were subsequently contacted by three sets of identical twins in the same position, who are all now undergoing treatment. This caused Professor Gosden to wonder if being a twin somehow increased the risk of premature menopause. Godsen said the results show that influences felt long before a woman is born can affect her health and fertility in adulthood.
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Reproduced from BioNews with permission, a web- and email-based source of news, information and comment on assisted reproduction and human genetics, published by Progress Educational Trust.
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