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Non-Invasive Blood Test for Fetal Genetic Anomalies

Posted on October 12, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Sylvia CookResearchers have developed a new prenatal blood test that accurately detected Down syndrome and two other serious chromosomal defects in a small study of 18 pregnant women. The test scan fetal DNA present in the mother's blood to detect chromosomal anomalies, particularly with chromosomes 21, 18, and 13, which are associated with severe birth defects.Employing a shotgun sequencing strategy using a high-throughput gene sequencing technology to identify millions of unique sequence tags in the fetal DNA, the scientists were able to correctly identify ...

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disease , genetic