Mothers blood test could be used to detect genetic risk to disorders in unborn child

A blood test that could predict an unborn baby's risk of numerous disorders has been devised by scientists.
Using a tiny sample of the mother's blood, researchers can piece together the child's entire genetic code and search its DNA for the flaws behind conditions such as Down' s syndrome and autism. The technique would remove the risk of miscarriage associated with current invasive tests, saving the lives of hundreds of unborn babies each year.

But there are fears that it could be exploited to predict an unborn child's risk of problems from Alzheimer's to cancer and heart attacks, creating worry for parents before their baby has even entered the world.

There are also concerns that parents could abuse the technology to select the 'perfect child', with those not fitting the bill in terms of looks, health or even personality being aborted. Currently, pregnant women thought to be at high risk of having a baby with a condition such as Down's syndrome have the choice of two procedures, amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling. Both involve putting a needle into the womb and raise the risk of miscarriage.

To remove the risk, research teams around the world are trying to find a way of gleaning genetic information from tiny pieces of foetal DNA that have worked their way into the mother's blood. For instance, NHS-funded researchers at Great Ormond Street Hospital are developing a blood test for Down's syndrome. But the new technique, reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine would allow multiple conditions to be picked up at once.

Using a sample of blood taken from a woman who was 12 weeks pregnant, researchers led by Dr Dennis Lo painstakingly pieced together the entire genetic code of her unborn child and then scanned it for key genetic flaws. They already knew that the child's parents were both carriers of beta-thalassaemia, a life-threatening blood disorder, raising the possibility that the child would have it.

By studying the child's genome, or entire cache of DNA, the researchers were able to reassure the parents that their child would merely carry the illness, rather than suffer from it.

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