JBR Journal of Clinical Diagnosis and Research
Open Access

Short Communication

Factors Affecting the Clinical Use of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing

Heather Skirton^1* and Leigh Jackson²

¹Applied Health Genetics, Faculty of Health and Human Sciences, Plymouth University, UK

²Faculty of Health and Human sciences, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK

Corresponding Author:

Skirton H
Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK
E-mail: Heather.skirton@plymouth.ac.uk

Received Date: May 15, 2015 Accepted Date: September 01, 2015 Published Date: September 03, 2015

Citation: Skirton H, Jackson L (2015) Factors Affecting the Clinical Use of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing. J Clin Diagn Res 3:121. doi:10.4172/2376-0311.1000121

Copyright: © 2015 Skirton H, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is a technique first developed in the early 1990’s that enables testing of a fetus for genetic conditions, based on a sample of maternal blood [1]. Small fragments of extracellular DNA from both mother and fetus are present in maternal plasma, and by excluding fragments of maternal origin, the fetus can be tested for sex, aneuploidy and some specific genetic conditions [2]. The main benefits of this type of fetal testing over amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling are the removal of any risk of miscarriage due to invasive testing and obtaining results in the first trimester [2].