Diagnostic Precision

A SeraCare blog focused on precision medicine and advanced clinical diagnostics

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Highlights from the ESHG and ESHRE 2020 Virtual Conferences

Category: Reproductive Health, PGT, Women's health, NIPT, Non-invasive Prenatal Testing, NGS, Preimplantation genetic testing

Posted by Agnes Caruso,PhD on Aug 20, 2020 12:00:00 AM
The plans for this year’s NIPT and PGT conferences, like many others, were quickly derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ESHG and ESHRE Annual Meetings were moved to virtual space and even though the format was a new experience, the science did not disappoint. Here we will share some of the highlights from the sessions.
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Supporting High-Quality Testing for Women’s Health

Category: Reproductive Health, HIV, NIPT, Non-invasive Prenatal Testing, Breast Cancer

Posted by Agnes Caruso,PhD on May 15, 2020 12:00:00 AM
This week is National Women’s Health week1 and is dedicated to women to focus on their health and take steps to improve it. As Women’s Health week traditionally starts on Mother’s Day, we tend to focus primarily on Reproductive Health but it is important to look at the complete picture as some women encounter various conditions and treatments prior to starting a family. Women’s health encompasses things like fertility, pregnancy, infections, cancer, but also many underlying health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular or respiratory conditions. Many of women’s health problems can be diagnosed by using advanced testing methods. As the technology develops and becomes more complex, ensuring the best performance of the tests is even more critical. With better testing, it is possible to improve outcomes for women around the world.
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Do COVID-19 infections affect NIPT?

Category: COVID-19, NIPT, Non-invasive Prenatal Testing, NGS, SARS-CoV-2

Posted by Prof. Joris Vermeesch, PhD on Mar 26, 2020 12:00:00 AM
We would like to present a guest blog from Prof. Joris Vermeesch, Ph.D. This blog originally posted on the Noninvasive Prenatal Testing Online Resource Page on the 17th March summarizes our current understanding of any possible interference of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the outcomes of NIPT testing.
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Evolution of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT)

Category: New Reference Material, trisomy, Reproductive Health, NIPT, Non-invasive Prenatal Testing, NGS, #Quality, reference materials

Posted by Agnes Caruso,PhD on Feb 5, 2020 12:00:00 AM
Prenatal screening for aneuploidy has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Non-invasive methods developed in the 1980s and 1990s, combined measurements of maternal serum analytes and ultrasonography. The problem with those methods was not just a high false-negative rate of 12% to 23%, a high positive rate of 5% and a poor sensitivity, ranging from 50% to 95% 1. Uncertain results frequently led to invasive procedures such as amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling to perform karyotyping on fetal samples. Both of those procedures carry a risk of miscarriage.
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