A paper has been released on 7th June by Science magazine on 'noninvasive blood tests for fetal development predict gestational age and preterm delivery'. Read ISUOG Board Member Mr Christoph Lees' comments on the paper here.
ISUOG Board Member Mr Christoph Lees commented:
"This is a fascinating ‘proof of principle’ but very early stage work. The authors of this paper show two potentially important results from taking a sample of the mother’s blood and looking at tiny RNA particles shed into the bloodstream. Firstly that it might be possible to determine how many weeks a pregnancy is, and secondly that the technique could predict early (preterm) delivery.
Both these questions are really important. In the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific the availability of ultrasound is good and most pregnancies are dated by ultrasound. Ultrasound can also determine whether there are additional problems with the pregnancy, but sometimes-particularly later in pregnancy-ultrasound dating isn’t accurate. Rather than ‘either-or’, if this technique worked, it might be particularly useful in combination with ultrasound. But we need to know better how this technique and ultrasound work ‘head to head’ in a much larger sample of women.
As far as preterm delivery is concerned, though checking the length of the mother’s cervix using ultrasound can in some cases predict very early delivery, as can taking a sample from the vagina for fibronectin. Neither is a perfect test. So a blood test taken from the mother that would better predict this would have potentially major implications in developed and developing countries-for example in determining where the mother might give birth, and targeting treatments better. This RNA blood test does seem to predict preterm delivery better than established methods, but as the test was used in women at high risk of preterm delivery, the test will always in this setting appear to predict better. The authors are careful to point to the limitations of the work, the number of women in whom the test was undertaken was small, it didn’t work in all cases and it is essential for proper validation in prospective studies.
In summary-interesting and potentially game changing, but too early to use in clinical practice."
For more from ISUOG on this subject, view our Virtual Issue on prediction and prevention of preterm birth.