Growing evidence suggests that epigenetic profile changes occurring during fetal development in response to in utero environment variations could be one of the mechanisms involved in the early determinants of adult chronic diseases. In this study, we tested whether maternal glycemic status is associated with the adiponectin gene (ADIPOQ) DNA methylation profile in placenta tissue, in maternal c...

BACKGROUND Circulating fetal DNA (cfDNA) in maternal plasma has been measured to investigate its possible relationship with pregnancy-related disorders, including fetal trisomy 21 and preeclampsia. The circulating concentrations of single-copy fetal genes, however, are close to the detection limits of PCR methods. METHODS We optimized a protocol for the real-time quantitative PCR amplificatio...

Background: Current prenatal diagnosis requires invasive testing which carries a 1-4% procedure-related-risk of miscarriage; hence, non-invasive techniques are desired. The recent demonstration of cell-free-fetal-DNA enriched from maternal plasma has opened new possibilities for non-invasive-prenatal-diagnosis of not only genetic-disorders such as β-thalassaemia and haemophilia but also chromos...

To the Editor: Applications of fetal DNA detection in maternal plasma have been reported for the prenatal assessment of fetal RhD status, sex-linked disorders, and -thalassemia. Because fetal DNA constitutes only 3% to 6% of the total DNA in maternal plasma (1 ), fetal sequences may occasionally go undetected because of low fetal DNA concentrations or fetal DNA loss during sample processing. Su...

Background: Current prenatal diagnosis requires invasive testing which carries a 1-4% procedure-related-risk of miscarriage; hence, non-invasive techniques are desired. The recent demonstration of cell-free-fetal-DNA enriched from maternal plasma has opened new possibilities for non-invasive-prenatal-diagnosis of not only genetic-disorders such as β-thalassaemia and haemophilia but also chromos...

In the broadest sense, noninvasive prenatal testing began in the 1970s, when the first articulatedarm diagnostic ultrasound machines produced two-dimensional images of fetuses in utero. Initially, the crude new imaging technology was eagerly adopted for the simple measurement of embryos, fetuses, and fetal parts to develop normative data for gestational-age determination. But as technology and ...

Correspondence: Dr. C.A. Ionescu e-mail: antoniuginec@ yahoo.com After numerous clinical validation studies, non-invasive prenatal testing for fetal aneuploidy detection is now a clinical reality. While non-invasive prenatal testing was accepted due to the high accuracy for fetal trisomy (21, 18 and 13) detection, recent research showed that genome-wide analysis is able to detect other fetal an...

Prenatal diagnosis (PD) is available for pregnancies at risk of monogenic disorders. However, PD requires the use of invasive obstetric techniques for fetal-sample collection and therefore, involves a risk of fetal loss. Circulating fetal DNA in the maternal bloodstream is being used to perform non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD). NIPD is a challenging discipline because of the biological fe...

background: free fetal dna (ffd) in maternal plasma/serum has increasingly become the source of fetal material for diagnostic purposes in recent years. this source of fetal material can be used for sex determination. rh typing paternally inherited sequences and compound heterozygosity. reports on the lack of consistent pcr amplification of y-chromosome sequences of ffd in maternal plasma/serum ...

background detection of fetal dna in maternal blood has been examined by many research groups for a few years; thereby, scientists have a shorter way to take to approach prenatal diagnosis of abnormal pregnancies. the y chromosome sequences have recently become the most common applicable indices for fetal sex determination. objectives we conducted an algorithmic x and y mini-short tandem repeat...