Expectant mothers often have lots of questions about the health of their baby inside their foetus. Prenatal testing can provide a lot of valuable information about your baby. One such prenatal test is NIPT. Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is an examination of expectant mothers’ blood to analyze their DNA to find out if there is any risk to the baby for any number of genetic disorders.
The First Step to getting Information About Your Baby
A sample of your blood is collected to look at the DNA from your baby’s placenta and identify whether you are at increased risk of giving birth to a child with a genetic disorder.
The procedure is entirely safe for you and your baby. The sample is then to a lab, where a technician will examine the cfDNA in your blood for signs of abnormalities.
However, it is important to know that NIPT is a screening test and not a diagnostic test but NIPT has advantages over other screening tests as it is a DNA based test. NIPT Test during Pregnancy can detect common aneuploidies like Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome with accuracy of more than 99%.
Once the results of NIPT are analyzed, your doctor will decide the next steps. Your test results will be seen in combination with the results of your first-trimester ultrasound or nuchal translucency screening. The doctor will decide if you should go for further diagnostic tests like chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis (“amnio”).
These are genetic tests that analyze a baby’s genetic material. The DNA is collected from the amniotic fluid or placenta to determine whether a baby has a chromosome abnormality with utmost surety.
Benefits of NIPT
This is the earliest prenatal test that acts as a prelude to invasive tests by positively determining the high-risk cases for further amniocentesis.
Non-Invasive Testing in India can be performed any time after nine weeks into your pregnancy. Compared to other screening tests such as nuchal translucency, screening is done between weeks 11 and 13. The quad screen is performed between weeks 14 to 22, CVS is performed at 11 to 14 weeks, and amniocentesis is usually conducted between weeks 15 and 20.
NIPT Test during Pregnancy screen for most of the common chromosomal disorders:
- Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome)
- Trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome)
- Trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome)
The test is also used to screen for additional chromosomal disorders caused by missing (deleted) or copied (duplicated) sections of a chromosome. It is considered non-invasive because the test requires drawing of blood only from the pregnant woman. Thereby producing no risk to the foetus.
NIPT Limitations
Non-Invasive Testing in India has its limitations as the test can only estimate whether there is an increased risk for a genetic abnormality or not.
In some cases, NIPT results showed an increased risk for a genetic abnormality when the foetus was not affected (false positive), or the results showed a decreased risk for any genetic abnormality when in reality, the foetus was actually affected (false negative).
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