Hospital developing way to identify Down syndrome during screening

2012/11/13 22:23:08 Taipei, Nov. 13 (CNA) The Changhua Christian Hospital in central Taiwan is developing a technique to detect Down syndrome in a fetus during prenatal screening by separating fetal DNA from the mother's blood, which is a test currently not offered in Taiwan, a senior hospital employee said on Tuesday.At the moment, a mother's blood sample for the advanced non-invasive prenatal test must be shipped overseas, said Chen Ming, head of the hospital's Department of Genomic Medicine.His department is working on the development of an "endemic technique" to conduct the prenatal screening test, which is performed on blood samples from the mother and tries to find fragments of fetal DNA within the sample to ascertain whether or not there is an abnormality on chromosome 21, Chen said.His research team takes blood samples from those who have been pregnant for 10 to 11 weeks for the chromosome screening, the specialist in gynecology and obstetrics said, noting that test results will come out in 14 days.So far the accuracy rate of assessing the risk of Down syndrome through the advanced screening is close to 100 percent among the more than 100 cases being tested at the hospital, he added.As soon as they accumulate enough samples for the test to be recognized by Taiwan's health authorities, hospitals will no longer have to send samples overseas, he said.At present, the most common ways to assess the risk of Down syndrome in prenatal tests in Taiwan include the non-invasive nuchal translucency test, other ultrasound screens and the invasive amniocentesis. (By Wu Jhe-hao and Elizabeth Hsu)