Unborn twins caught fighting in womb

In the “You’ve got to be kidding” category, today’s Huffington Post ran a story about an MRI video of two twins looking like they were fighting while still in mommy’s tummy. Here is how the first couple of paragraphs went:

“’It’s my womb!’ ‘No, it’s my womb!’ Siblings apparently are never too young to be rivals, a video taken from a new high-clarity MRI scan shows.

“The high-tech monitor, also dubbed the “cinematic MRI,” allows doctors to see, in better detail, when twins vie for space in utero, Dr. Marisa Taylor-Clarke of Imperial College’s Robert Steiner MR Unit in London told Reuters.

“While the new MRI provides amazing footage, it has an important application on a diagnostic level: Doctors use it to diagnose how fetuses are affected by twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) — a dangerous condition in which one identical twin siphons blood away from the other, the doctor said.

“’A lot of the so-called videos in the womb are very processed, so they do a lot of reconstructing and computer work afterwards. These are the raw images that are acquired immediately,’ Taylor-Clarke told New Scientist to explain why she uses the technique to study TTTS.

“This condition deprives the ‘donor’ of nutrients and can put too much pressure on the heart of the one receiving the lion’s share, according to the Twin To Twin Transfusion Syndrome Foundation. It can occur at any time during pregnancy. While a regular ultrasound may be able to detect TTTS, it does not reveal its impact.”

For more, see Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/twins-fighting-in-womb-video_n_2219407.html

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