Abstract

Sequenom Inc., a developer of medical diagnostic products, recently made their noninvasive test for Down syndrome available for clinical practice.1 The DNA-based test—given the name “MaterniT21”—requires only a simple maternal blood sample as early as 10 weeks of gestation. In recent clinical trials involving thousands of pregnant women, the MaterniT21 test identified 99.1% of cases of Down syndrome, and gave the correct result in 99.9% of cases when the fetus did not have Down syndrome. Sequenom’s test is thought to be an improvement on previous prenatal testing techniques because of its.