Blood tests could ease search for down syndrome

For three decades, scientists have been trying to develop a noninvasive prenatal test for Down syndrome that would replace amniocentesis, which can cause miscarriages. Now, scientists using powerful genetic techniques are closing in on that goal with tests that require only a blood sample from the pregnant woman. A biotechnology company in San Diego called Sequenom says it will begin selling such a test next June. Another testing technique, developed at Stanford, is described in a paper published online Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There are reasons to be cautious. The Stanford test has been tried on only 18 blood samples. Sequenom has tried its test on only about 400 samples and has not yet published its results in peer-reviewed journals. Still, both tests have perfect records so far: no false negatives or false positives.

Steve - while in early stages, this could be an extremely meaningful shift from the scary and invasive amniocentesis procedure. We will be keeping a keen eye on this development.