We know that a non invasive prenatal DNA testing can reveal a lot about genetic predisposition to disease and can moreover, even help to determine paternity.
Paternity Testing while Pregnant
This recent breakthrough in science means that a sample from the mother’s blood can trace the diseases the unborn child may be carrying. Pregnant women will always carry traces of the blood of the baby they are carrying; more importantly, the research in question has focused on the chromosomes which are found in the mother’s blood. These fetal chromosomes can be isolated and then used for paternity testing. Scientists can isolate the unborn child’s chromosomes because they are present in amounts which are higher than normal. Fetal DNA finds its way into the mother’s blood stream through the placental wall. A blood sample enables scientists to isolate the unborn child’s DNA and extract a profile. A DNA sample of the alleged father will then be required so as to be able to compare the profiles. This type of prenatal test for paternity is totally risk free.
Fetal DNA can be extracted as early as the 10th week of pregnancy. The sample is extracted from the mother via a simple medical blood draw. The blood extracted can be used to carry out a totally risk free non invasive prenatal paternity test.
Non Invasive Testing for Hereditary Illnesses
This non-invasive test can be used to determine if the unborn child carrying any genes that might be responsible for autoimmune diseases, for example, Down’s syndrome.
If parents are expecting children, they may want to run some blood tests to see if they carry any mutations which might be disease causing as these might be passed on to their unborn child. If the mother does not carry that mutation in her genes, then the mutation is assumed to have been inherited from the father. The thing is, whilst a blood test can tell parents which genetic diseases they carry; they cannot indicate whether or not the child will inherit them. Normally, certain diagnostic tests can be run to confirm the presence of the genes causing the disease in the child.
Traditional methods of carrying out prenatal DNA testing for diseases using procedures such as amniocentesis and CVS (chorionic villus sampling) will not in any way is phased out; these will still remain very important. However, many mothers are reluctant to undergo these invasive prenatal tests knowing that around 1% of them end up in miscarriage.
Non invasive prenatal testing for paternity is a huge advantage over traditional methods as this procedure is risk free.
