Tag Archives: Pregnancy testing

June 2021—If screening for gestational diabetes mellitus were a dance competition, it might have a contest between quickstep and paso doble as its signature event. That tournament could pit the one-step testing protocol (twice as likely to diagnose GDM) against the two-step testing protocol (significantly easier for pregnant women to adhere to).

December 2020—Circulating cell-free DNA in the blood of pregnant women is derived from both maternal tissues and the placenta.¹ As a result, cfDNA isolated from maternal plasma can be used for noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) to identify fetal autosomal aneuploidies (trisomies 13, 18, and 21) and sex chromosome aneuploidies (SCAs). For fetal autosomal aneuploidies, NIPS offers higher detection rates and lower false-positive rates than traditional screening methods, such as maternal serum screening and nuchal translucency.² NIPS is the only screening option available for SCAs, such as Turner syndrome (45,X) and Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), which do not pre­sent with ambiguous genitalia on fetal ultrasound.³

April 2018—When women of childbearing age check in at a cancer center where they might be undergoing medical or surgical treatment, the screening protocol is often to test them for pregnancy, primarily by quantifying serum β-hCG.