Advanced Prenatal Care for Mom-To-Be

Congratulations, you are pregnant! Now it’s time to educate yourself about what makes a healthy pregnancy! One of the things you will quickly learn is that there are several tests involved in your prenatal care. From blood tests to urine tests to glucose tests, there is a lot to understand about what these tests tell your clinician regarding the health of your growing baby.

Another important test that you will be faced with is chromosome testing for things like Down syndrome and trisomy 18. Often, this type of testing is offered through what’s called “maternal serum screening”, which is done in the first trimester. But current serum screening has false negative rates of up to 30% and a false positive rate up to 5%. The other option is to get an invasive procedure like an amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS), both of which also detect chromosome conditions. However, many women are concerned about the safety of these invasive tests given the risk of miscarriage is 1 out of every 300 procedures performed.

In the last two years, great strides have been made in the field of prenatal screening. A simpler and safer option is now available to pregnant women. The new screening is done through a blood test and can be performed as early as 10 weeks’ gestation. The test is known as a non-invasive prenatal test, or NIPT, and it can detect chromosomal conditions by screening blood taken from the mother. This new procedure gives parents-to-be a non-invasive option to learn more about the health of their baby.

WHAT DOES IT TEST FOR?

The baby is tested for Down syndrome (trisomy 21), trisomy 18 and trisomy 13 as well as conditions linked to the X and Y sex chrosomomes. The test can also determine fetal sex as early as 10 weeks!

IS IT ACCURATE?

A recent study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology provided new evidence that non-invasive prenatal testing with the Harmony™ Prenatal Test, from Ariosa Diagnostics, is effective in a general screening population. The study of more than 2,000 women undergoing routine screening for fetal trisomies (a third or extra copy of a chromosome) showed that the Harmony test detected nearly all cases of fetal trisomy 21 and 18 at a false-positive rate of 0.1 percent.

SHOULD YOU GET SCREENED?

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that only women with high-risk pregnancies should be offered NIPT. You’re considered high-risk if you’re over 35, have a history of carrying a child with a trisomy disorder or if an ultrasound indicates an increased risk.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

Earlier, more accurate detection of chromosome conditions can help inform and empower parents, and NIPT can reduce the need for unnecessary amniocentesis and CVS procedures.