Everything you need to know about NIPT: non-invasive prenatal testing
I got pregnant for the first time at 37, and felt as old as time, with a raisin for a womb and a sky-high risk of having a child with genetic abnormalities. When I unloaded my bag of “geriatric pregnancy” anxiety on my OB/GYN during our eight-week visit, she laughed. Not with me, but notably at me. She told me 37 isn?t that old and, in all likelihood, I would have a healthy pregnancy. But if I was truly concerned about the risks of genetic abnormalities, which do increase with advanced maternal age, I could have a blood test called NIPT, which stands for non-invasive prenatal testing.
Administered at 10 to 13 weeks, and with no physical risk to me or the fetus, NIPT would analyze fragments of placenta DNA that circulate in my bloodstream and screen for extra chromosomes that could indicate Down?s syndrome (trisomy 21), Edwards syndrome (trisomy 18) and Patau syndrome (trisomy 13) with 90 percent accuracy. The traditional set of first-trimester screenings that look for these issues, including the nuchal translucency (NT) ultrasound that measures the thickness of the fluid at the back of the fetus?s neck, have an accuracy rate between 85 and 90 percent and take place between 11 weeks gestation and 14 weeks. Not only does NIPT offer more precise information earlier, it also has a low false-positive rate: About one in 1,000 people get a false-positive result compared to 50 in 1,000 for the conventional screens. Gathering as much information as early as possible was ...
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