Screening Down Syndrome

Prenatal Down syndrome tests are a go (at some point)

User Image razib | August 10, 2009
Last spring there was a false alarm about a noninvasive form of prenatal testing, in particular for Down syndrome. But if The Guardian is right then the British NHS is pushing forward on a more general program in this direction: The early signs are so promising that the professor leading the programme says that the risk-free test could be the standard method of detecting babies with some genetic conditions inherited from the father within two to three years and those with Down's syndrome within five - and in the process save the lives of an estimated 265 mostly normal babies a year. The life-…

New method to detect Down Syndrome

User Image razib | February 24, 2009
New Safety, New Concerns In Tests for Down Syndrome: The new tests take advantage of techniques that can isolate and analyze tiny bits of genetic information from the fetus that circulate in a woman's bloodstream, in this case from cells or free-floating snippets of DNA or the related molecule RNA. At least four companies are developing such tests, including Sequenom of San Diego, which plans to be the first on the market in June. The other companies hope to have their versions on the market within a year. "For 50 years, folks have been working to develop a noninvasive genetic test for Down…