King's College hopes to offer a new method of testing for Down's syndrome before birth that researchers claim will be 99 percent accurate, The Telegraph reported.
The new method could keep pregnant woman from experiencing more invasive testing, along with being more accurate. The test is also prospected to prevent the miscarriages of about 300 babies a year, who are harmed by the process known as CVS.
The current testing procedure screens all fetuses for chromosome 21, which causes the disorder, at 12-weeks. The doctor's determine whether the baby has a high or low risk of having the condition.
About half of all British women who are screened are deemed to be high risk every year. When this prognosis occurs a second, more invasive test is prescribed. The test causes a miscarriage in about one in every 100 women.
Scientist at King's College have created a blood test that will reduce the number of women who must take the second test to about 1,500 a year in Britain.
The new procedure was tested, and the findings were published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
In the trial 1,005 pregnant woman had their blood sampled when they were at ten weeks, the samples were sent to a lab in the U.S. The laboratory analyzed the DNA that was in the mother's blood and sent back the results two weeks later.
"With the new test you get a result which is either more than 99 percent chance, or a less than one in ten thousand chance. It is a very clear distinction between the two" said Prof. Kypros Nicolaides, who led the study.
The test is still in an ongoing trial, and is being offered to women who participate for free.
"The test results from Prof. Nicolaides and his team at King's College show that the use of an early non-invasive blood test that could be used throughout the national screening programme is still a fair way off," said Carol Boys, Chief Executive of the Down's Syndrome Association. "The test is becoming more accurate. There are still small but significant anomalies that make it difficult to see how this could replace the current screening process."
