The analysis of circulating nucleic acids has revealed applications in the noninvasive diagnosis, monitoring, and prognostication of many clinical conditions. Circulating fetal-specific sequences have been detected and constitute a fraction of the total DNA in maternal plasma. The diagnostic reliability of circulating DNA analysis depends on the fractional concentration of the targeted sequence...

background: fetal dna has been found in maternal plasma. diagnosis of fetal gender using maternal plasma has been attempted in an effort to develop a new noninvasive method of prenatal diagnosis. methods: we extracted dna from plasma of 30 pregnant woman, three men, three non-pregnant women, and performed a sensitive y-pcr assay to detect circulating male fetal dna from women bearing male fetus...

BACKGROUND Increased fetal DNA in maternal plasma/serum has been reported in pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia. We hypothesized that impaired clearance of fetal DNA might contribute, at least in part, to the above-mentioned phenomenon. METHODS We studied 7 preeclamptic and 10 control pregnant women. All had male fetuses. Serial blood samples were obtained from before delivery to 6 h pos...

BACKGROUND There is much recent interest in the biologic and diagnostic implication of cell-free non-host DNA in the plasma and serum of human subjects. To determine if quantitative abnormalities of circulating non-host DNA may be associated with certain pathologic processes, we used circulating fetal DNA in preeclampsia as a model system. METHODS We studied 20 preeclamptic women and 20 contr...

BACKGROUND Detection of circulating cell-free fetal nucleic acids in maternal plasma has been used in noninvasive prenatal diagnostics. Most applications rely on the qualitative detection of fetal nucleic acids to determine the genetic makeup of the fetus. This method leads to an analytic dilemma, because test results from samples that do not contain fetal DNA or are contaminated with maternal ...

Cell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) is available in the maternal circulation throughout pregnancy and can be used for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis including, determination of fetal sex, identification of specific single gene disorders, typing of fetal blood groups (RhD), paternity determination and potentially routine use for Down’s syndrome (DS) testing of all pregnancies. I searched published lite...

The discovery of cell-free fetal DNA molecules in plasma of pregnant women has created a paradigm shift in noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Circulating cell-free DNA in maternal plasma has been increasingly recognized as an important proxy to detect fetal abnormalities in a noninvasive manner. A variety of approaches for NIPT using next-generation sequencing have been developed, which have ...

Successful detection of circulating nucleic acids has opened up new possibilities in cancer testing and prenatal diagnosis. Circulating DNA markers are useful in cancer detection, prognostication and monitoring. Cancer-associated molecular changes which can be detected include gene mutations, chromosomal rearrangements, microsatellite alterations, viral sequences, and, to be discussed in more d...