What doctors read

Babies resulting from in vitro fertilization or GIFT assisted conception are eight times more likely to be born with cardiac malformations than those conceived normally.

In a letter to The Lancet, doctors from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Turin in Italy said that they'd studied 104 babies born as a result of 69 assisted conceptions, mostly from IVF.Almost 7 per cent of the children were born with some major congenital malformation, from heart malformations to clubfoot, compared to 2 per cent in the general Italian population.

By far the greatest problem was heart malformations (nearly 4 per cent), compared to about 0.5 per cent rate in that hospital and 0.39 per cent in northern Italy.

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