A newly available DNA-based prenatal blood test from Sequenom, San Diego, that can identify a pregnancy with Down syndrome can also identify two additional chromosome abnormalities: trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome) and trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome). The test for all three defects can be offered as early as 10 weeks of pregnancy to women who have been identified as being at high risk for these abnormalities.
These are the results of an international, multicenter study published online in the journal Genetics in Medicine. The study adds to the documented capability (study published in Genetics in Medicine in October 2011) of the tests by examining results in 62 pregnancies with trisomy 18 and 12 pregnancies with trisomy 13. Together with the Down syndrome pregnancies reported earlier, 286 trisomic pregnancies and 1,702 normal pregnancies are included in the report.
The research was led by Glenn Palomaki, PhD, and Jacob Canick, PhD, of the Division of Medical Screening and Special Testing in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and included scientists at Sequenom Inc and Sequenom Center for Molecular Medicine, San Diego, and an independent academic laboratory at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The test identified 100% (59/59) of the trisomy 18 and 91.7% (11/12) of the trisomy 13 pregnancies. The associated false positive rates were 0.28 and 0.97%, respectively. Overall, testing failed to provide a clinical interpretation in 17 women (0.9%); three of these women had a trisomy 18 pregnancy. By slightly raising the definition of a positive test for chromosome 18 and 13, the detection rate remained constant, but the false positive rate could be as low as 0.1%. These findings, along with the detailed information learned from testing such a large number of samples, demonstrate that the new test will be highly effective when offered to women considering invasive testing.
Source: Brown University
