The use of maternal age alone to identify pregnant mothers at risk of a fetus with Down's syndrome has recently been supplemented by maternal serum screening using biochemical markers such as alpha-protein, human chorionic gonadotrophin and oestriol. These tests have been reported to increase the sensitivity of antenatal detection of such fetuses from 35% to 67% with a false positive rate of 5%...

OBJECTIVES Prenatal screening for Down syndrome has become standard practice in many western countries. In the Netherlands, however, prenatal screening tests for congenital defects are not offered routinely. The present study aims to assess test uptake in a large, unselected population of pregnant women, and to give more insight into the decision for or against prenatal screening through nuchal...

AIMS To perform a systematic review of screening for pre-eclampsia (PE) with the combination of uterine artery Doppler (UAD), maternal history, mean arterial pressure and/or maternal serum markers. METHODS We identified eligible studies through a search of Medline, and, for each included study, we assessed the risk of bias and extracted relevant data. We reported the performance of screening ...

Objective: To develop a Canadian consensus document with recommendations on maternal screening for fetal aneuploidy (e.g., Down syndrome and trisomy 18) in pregnancy. Options: Pregnancy screening for fetal aneuploidy started in the mid 1960s, using maternal age as the screening test. New developments in maternal serum and ultrasound screening have made it possible to offer all pregnant patients...

background: abnormal levels of the markers afp, hcg, and ue3 could be useful in predicting adverse pregnancy outcomes. this study was designed to determine the correlation between second trimester maternal serum markers and adverse pregnancy outcome (apo). methods: in this historical cohort study, we randomly followed 231 obstetric patients with quadruple screening test in 14-18 weeks of gestat...

Single-step maternal serum screening (MSS) in the first (1MSS) or second (2MSS) trimester at maternal age > or =35 years was evaluated in the North Belgian region Flanders, where difficulties are encountered in the general introduction of combined or integrated screening algorithms. The fetal aneuploidy screening database of General Medical Laboratory AML in Antwerp was searched for 2MSS tests ...

AIMS To analyse the predictive power of maternal serum inhibin A, activin A, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), unconjugated estriol (uE(3)), alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) levels and uterine artery Doppler in the second trimester of pregnancy in screening for pre-eclampsia. METHODS Maternal serum inhibin A, activin A, hCG, uE(3), and AFP levels and uterine artery Doppler were determined in 178 hea...

In the Prenatal Diagnosis special issue of July 2010, a good prediction was made by the author (Dennis Lo, 2010) on non-invasive methods of diagnosis of fetal anomalies. Non-invasive prenatal diagnoses are useful in the detection of fetal genetic abnormalities, aneuploidies and high-risk pregnancy. Fetal DNA analysis in maternal plasma using single molecule analysis method, no doubt, will defin...

BACKGROUND Although maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein (MSAFP) is a highly sensitive marker for certain congenital malformations such as open neural tube and ventral wall defects, its usefulness as a screening test for fetal hydrocephalus is uncertain. We wished to determine the distribution of maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein levels associated with fetal hydrocephalus in a population-based scree...