The identification of cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) in maternal plasma in 1997 heralded the most significant change in obstetric care for decades, with the advent of safer screening and diagnosis based on analysis of maternal blood. Here, we describe how the technological advances offered by next-generation sequencing have allowed for the development of a highly sensitive screening test for aneu...

49,XXXXY and 48,XXXY syndromes are rare gonosomal aneuploidies in which the affected individuals present with characteristic facial and skeletal malformations, intrauterine growth retardation, and psychomotor retardation. Psychological, endocrinologic and orthopedic disorders constitute the major problems in the clinical follow-up. Sex chromosome abnormalities should especially be kept in mind ...

Massively parallel sequencing of cell-free, maternal plasma DNA was recently demonstrated to be a safe and effective screening method for fetal chromosomal aneuploidies. Here, we report an improved sequencing method achieving significantly increased throughput and decreased cost by replacing laborious sequencing library preparation steps with PCR employing a single primer pair designed to ampli...

The present preimplantation diagnosis test is able to screen for the most common aneuploidies from single blastomeres in about five hours with a 15 per cent misdiagnosis. This means that the risk of spontaneous abortion and trisomic offspring for women of advanced maternal age could be reduced to the same level as younger women for whom prenatal diagnosis is usually not necessary. Better probes...

The widespread use of genetic testing in high risk pregnancies has created strong interest in rapid and accurate molecular diagnostics for common chromosomal aneuploidies. We show here that digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) can be used for accurate measurement of trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome), the most common human aneuploidy. dPCR is generally applicable to any aneuploidy, does not depen...

Quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction has been in diagnostic use in the UK for over 10 years and has proved to be a cost-effective, robust and accurate rapid prenatal test for common aneuploidies. Specific advantages include detection of triploidy, mosaicism and maternal cell contamination. Its application at our centre is described, with developments including stand-alone testing ...