New technology shows baby's gender and certain genetic abnormalities in first five weeks
Tuesday January 12, 2010
A baby's gender is now able to be determined as early as five weeks into a pregnancy with a ground-breaking new development to replace current invasive testing.
Predicted to revolutionise early stage pregnancy, the new development is a simple blood test from the mother that can be used to determine a foetus' gender and certain early stage genetic abnormalities. Already successful overseas, the test is spouted by Dutch researchers as being almost 100 per cent accurate in determining gender and assists in recognising certain abnormalities such as Down syndrome and muscular dystrophy.
Results from the team of Dutch researchers showed that when the test was performed on 200 women, only ten cases could not determine the sex of the child.
The current process of amniocentesis tests is deemed too risky and invasive with a needle extracting fluid from around the baby, a testing system that results one in every 300 tests ending in miscarriage. Additionally, the amniocentesis test can only be performed after 11 weeks of pregnancy.
The new testing process is far less invasive and risky with the mother's blood plasma tested for foetal DNA levels which will contain a genetic sequence that can be read to identify certain genetic characteristics such as sex and abnormalities. While the test can be completed as early as five weeks, most would be performed at seven weeks for greater accuracy.
Head of women's and children's health at the University of NSW, Professor Michael Chapman, told News Ltd that the discover was the "holy grail" of research with 25 years of work leading towards this.
"The biggest advantage of this in a wanted pregnancy is there is no risk of miscarriage during testing."
