Could There Be a Cheap Blood Test to Predict a Baby's Birth Date? New Study Suggests Maybe
New Blood Test Could Predict Preterm Labor 2 Months Earlier It Happens
Ii newly developed blood tests may help moms-to-be accurately answer this ever-popular question: When is your baby due?
1 blood test can predict gestational age and delivery appointment, while the other tin flag some women who are at risk for premature delivery, according to a new study.
However, both tests are still in the beginning stages of research and aren't yet available to the public, according to the written report, which was published online today (June viii) in the journal Science.
If these potentially low-cost tests are available for public utilize someday, they could "hold promise for prenatal care in both the adult and developing worlds," the researchers wrote in the study. That'southward because about 15 one thousand thousand babies are born prematurely every year worldwide, and in the United States, premature birth is the leading crusade of death among newborns, likewise as complications later in life, the researchers said. [Blossoming Body: 8 Odd Changes That Happen During Pregnancy]
To perform the tests, scientists took blood samples from significant women and then analyzed free-floating genetic fabric known as RNA within each sample. This RNA comes not just from the mother just also the fetus and placenta and can provide insight on fetal evolution. In fact, these fragments of RNA can reveal which genes are switched on, indicating which phase of maturation the fetus has reached.
In upshot, these noninvasive tests provide a mode of "eavesdropping on a conversation" between the mother, the fetus and the placenta, without disturbing the pregnancy, report co-researcher Dr. David K. Stevenson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University in California, said in a argument.
In the outset experiment, scientists examined 31 healthy meaning women from Denmark who agreed to donate a blood sample from each calendar week of their pregnancy, the researchers said. All of the women delivered their babies at full term, or after 37 weeks of pregnancy. After analyzing the women's blood samples, the researchers plant that RNA fragments corresponding to placental genes, "might provide an accurate estimate of fetal development and gestational age throughout pregnancy," the researchers wrote in the study.
In fact, the predicted due dates from the RNA biomarkers were comparable with those from a first-trimester ultrasound, the researchers said. Even better, this exam could be less expensive and more than widely accessible than ultrasounds, the researchers noted.
In the 2d experiment, the researchers looked at 38 pregnant women — recruited by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Alabama at Birmingham — who had an increased risk of preterm commitment because they had experienced premature contractions or had given birth prematurely before.
This experiment was small and unblinded (meaning the researchers knew which women'due south samples they were looking at) but had encouraging results: When the researchers looked at a subset of the women, they found that the RNA analysis correctly classified half dozen of eight (75 percent) women who delivered prematurely. Moreover, the same examination misclassified just 1 of the 26 women who carried to total term. (In other words, it predicted that one woman wouldn't carry to full term, merely she did.)
When they did the examination once again on a different group of women within the study, the test accurately predicted fourscore pct of preterm births. Withal, information technology also misclassified 3 of the xviii total-term births. These results came from blood samples that were collected two months before the women went into labor, the researchers noted. [9 Uncommon Weather That Pregnancy May Bring]
"With farther study, we might be able to identify specific genes and cistron pathways that could reveal some of the underlying causes of preterm nascence, and advise potential targets for interventions to foreclose it," Stevenson said.
However, both tests accept several limitations at this point. Outset and foremost, each test needs to exist verified in a larger clinical trial that includes diverse ethnicities and is blinded, significant the scientists won't know which women are at risk for preterm nativity, the researchers said.
However, if all goes well, the tests could be a useful, potentially inexpensive tool for both pregnant women and their doctors, the researchers said. The written report was funded past the March of Dimes, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub — a research collaboration funded by Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his married woman Priscilla Chan.
Original article on Live Science.
Laura is an editor at Live Scientific discipline. She edits Life's Picayune Mysteries and reports on general scientific discipline, including archaeology and animals. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Scientific discipline and Spectrum, a site on autism research. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Clan for her reporting at a weekly paper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor'due south degree in English language literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a principal's caste in scientific discipline writing from NYU.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/62778-blood-tests-pregnancy-due-date.html
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