Blood test that can tell if your child will be premature
‘This is potentially very exciting’
A SIMPLE blood test could identify four out of five women who will have premature births.
Researchers say they have found a more accurate way to spot those who will go into labour more than three weeks before full-term.
Around 60,000 children a year are born prematurely in the UK – roughly one in 12. If the baby’s heart and lungs are underdeveloped this can lead to lifethreatening health problems.
The only tests involve measuring for a short cervix or a warning protein released from the womb. In the NHS, these are offered only to women already seen as high risk and the tests can miss up to half of cases.
But scientists at Stanford University in California have discovered a way of identifying ‘messenger molecules’ in the blood. These warn of genetic changes that can bring on early labour.
In two groups of trials on 57 women in America and Denmark, the test – which can be carried out up to two months before delivery – proved 75 to 80 per cent accurate in predicting premature births.
The technique now needs to be tested in larger-scale trials and, if successful, it could be widely available in five years.
Dr Mads Melbye, a senior author of the study and visiting professor of medicine at Stanford, said: ‘We found that a handful of genes are very highly predictive of which women are at risk for pre-term delivery.
‘This is the first real, significant scientific progress on this problem in a long time.’
If doctors know a baby is at risk of being born prematurely they can take action.
Options include giving women a stitch in their cervix, hormone treatment to hold back labour or steroids to help infant lungs mature faster, as well as magnesium to protect the child’s brain. Mothers at risk can also be sent to specialist units.
The Stanford test detects cellfree RNA, which transports the body’s genetic code and can flag up seven genetic changes believed to relate to contractions and inflammation, which may cause early labour.
Researchers took blood tests from 34 pregnant Danish and American women, then verified the findings with 23 more American women.
Results published in the journal Science show that the initial tests correctly predicted six out of eight early births and 25 out of 26 fullterm. After 23 more tests, the overall accuracy rate was 7580 per cent.
Premature birth specialist Professor Andrew Shennan, of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, said: ‘These early findings would need to be evaluated in large numbers, but are potentially very exciting. Pre-term birth is a significant concern worldwide and simple tests to predict who to treat would be very valuable.’