Window on THE WOMB

FINDS OUT ABOUT THE NEWEST TYPE OF PREGNANCY TESTING AND WHY IT MIGHT BE SUITABLE FOR YOU.

You may have heard that there are new kinds of diagnostics that are available to pregnant women that help them to discover that their baby is well and healthy. These are currently only available privately for around £500 and your doctor or hospital may offer this service as part of your ante-natal package. However, you might want to investigate this yourself and to find out the benefits of this kind of test.

Called NIPD (Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis) or NIPT (Non-invasive prenatal testing), the tests are conducted using a sample of the mother’s blood and are used to determine whether there is a chance of congenital conditions such as Down’s Syndrome.

This is a new and rapidly evolving technology and it is exciting because the tests carry far fewer risks for the baby than previous tests such as Amniocentesis and Chorionic Villus sampling (see What Came Before, on page 18).

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Non-invasive tests work by analysing DNA fragments contained in the mother’s blood plasma during her pregnancy, known as cellfree DNA. While the majority of this is from the mother, approximately 10 to 20 per cent is from the placenta and shows the DNA make-up of your baby. This is called cell-free foetal DNA (cffDNA).